


Let Me Live That Fantasy

by mrhiddles



Series: Royals [2]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comfort/Angst, Coming of Age, Frigga Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Intersex Loki, Jötunheimr | Jotunheim, Jötunn Loki, M/M, Slow Build, Thor Feels, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2017-01-20
Packaged: 2017-12-29 00:38:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 33,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/998787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrhiddles/pseuds/mrhiddles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Asgard has its King and Jotunheim still has many secrets left untold.</p><p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/953875">Let Me Be Your Ruler</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> It's no secret all these titles are from [Royals](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFasFq4GJYM) by Lorde.
> 
> Other music that I highly suggest for the rest of this story as it progresses:  
> [The Gravel Road](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkG9a9GVcFU) by James Newton Howard.  
> [We Move Lightly](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wth05NWtbZU) by Dustin O'Halloran.  
> [Heima Thurs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omVeyx4ulf4) by Wardruna.  
> [Sowelu](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp-cqiP5fzA) by Wardruna.

Loki is gone in a whirl of blue skin and black hair, the absence of one last look of his face a final thievery to Thor’s heart he feels deep in his chest. Thor feels he might call out, that he must, but he can’t. He can’t.

It is too hot here in Asgard. There is too much gold and green and there is no snow or ice or even fog. It is bright and gaudy and an altogether _lie_. A righteous golden fury, a refusal in the face of the legendary ruin Laufey so laid upon it; wiped clean as if such a war never happened. It stands as a quiet, calm place, birds calling out in the sky—mocking the torment Thor feels consuming him.

And Thor is its rightful heir.

Loki has left him. He has disappointed Loki. He feels it in his chest, heart pounding to where he feels his breath escape him. Thor feels his knees ache, locked where he stands and he feels he might simply collapse.

Loki has left him.

His Loki is gone.

Frigga stands by. She is a quiet, watchful presence as Thor, finally, lets out a roar.

Shame. There is shame in his heart.

Thor feels he has failed where he did not know there was chance to.

\--

Loki returns with tears trailing hot down his face and oh, how he must embody the face of fury, for all who see him move out of his way. And just as well, for Loki feels as if he could tear the throat of even the largest Jotun, should they cross him now. He has but to turn down a path here or there and find one heart to squeeze.

Byleister is there, at the end of the long hallway of ice as Loki marches past, intent on going straight to his rooms, not wanting to seek gossip by mindlessly killing one of those milling about. But Byleister stops him, a daring hand on his brother’s shoulder. Those present in that icy court are staring at them, and a sharp hiss from Loki sends their gazes scattering to other, less important things.

Loki snaps his shoulder away, takes a step back. He glares up at his brother and bites his tongue hard enough he suspects he might taste blood soon.

“You _knew_ ,” Loki rumbles up to him, voice locked tight in his throat. A threat. He palms the air at his sides, knowing he has but to summon ice, a blade, _anything_ —

There is concern in Byleister’s eyes, and that is what halts him in the end.

“Loki, what has happened?” He pauses, looking at his forehead. More slowly, he asks, “Why do you glamour your horns?”

“’Twas a sacrifice in vain. I have them no longer.”

Byleister’s heavy brow twists in confusion. He does not understand. How could he? But once more he meets Loki’s eyes and asks, serious, “Where is Thor?”

Loki feels his eyes well, tears stinging. He holds the glare even as a few slip past and tint the edge of his lips in salt.

“Laufey held a crueler, more selfish heart than ever I knew.”

\--

They give him a room.

The room he and Loki shared.

“Temporary,” the Queen had said, touching gentle fingers to his shoulder. Thor cannot bring himself to shy away from the affectionate gesture, no matter that she is his birth mother. He is not an animal in that he would harm a woman who had done him no wrong other than bring such ugly truth to light. He is angry, both at she and himself and even with Loki, mostly with Mimir, but he knows when to acknowledge truth when it is so plain. He cannot hold lies like—

The shade of even the thought of Loki makes his stomach roll, and once more he is forced to rush to the adjoining bathing chamber. Thor kneels over the stone barrier housing the wide space of tile, a drain in the center, and empties the bile rising up his throat. A ghost of that very morning when they’d first arrived in this realm.

Only now there is no teasing Loki and there are no comforting touches.

There is no Loki and Thor feels lost.

\--

Thor can still smell Loki in the sheets they’d rolled in not five hours past.

The day—odd in itself as Asgard has a very prominent, visible sun—passes slowly and he is grateful that no one bothers him. He was raised a slave and then raised to be guard to a great leader, but he has since regained enough self to feel shame at being watched in such a pathetic state. He has come to know privacy as a delicate, cherished thing, and now he craves it more than he has craved most things.

Thor draws the fine silk curtains and blocks the bright sunlight, then lies facedown where Loki had slept, breathing in the pillow he’d laid his head upon and fisting the sheets about his shoulders. He feels sick. He sobs. He buries himself in the memory of Loki.

Now he is King to a land he’s known for barely two days.

And no one comes and he is alone.

\--

Thor replays the day’s events in his mind. He avoids the terrible shock he’d felt when Frigga’s and Loki’s words had sunk in, the revulsion. The damnation he felt when Loki simply accepted it. Loki had left with tears in his eyes. So rare.

But then he’d left.

No, no, he must not think on it.

Instead, Thor thinks of when they’d first arrived. He thinks of the bustling, charming market and the amount of people surging through. Such commonwealth was rare on Jotunheim. Jotnar were private, reclusive creatures and rarely did such a gathering occur outside of war or royal court.

Thor had fallen a little in love with the easy smiles the Asgardians gave to each other. The way lovers had held hands and hugged and how he had even spied a kiss in the crowd. He was humbled by how children ran free of their parents, playing in the pathways and the orchards because they felt safe there. Jotunheim’s children would die in the wild, and so rarely were they apart from the company of their mothers. It simply wasn’t an option.

He’d enjoyed the warmth as a onetime luxury.

He’d loved this place enough to find beauty in Loki’s strange green eyes, and the fish-scale paleness of his skin as they moved together in the dark. It was so different. It was new. An exciting experience to share together.

But he thought he’d be returning to Jotunheim. To home. With Loki.

Thor knows he will most likely see neither ever again.

\--

“So, Thor is lost to us.”

Loki makes a fist at his knee, knuckles tight. He slides his brother a livid stare.

They sit in Byleister’s chambers. Loki sits with his legs hanging some yards above the floor on his table, scrolls and half-made maps resting weighted with knives and clay ink pots. They are both less likely to be found together here, for in recent years those of Loki’s hall know that it has been a rare thing to see the brothers alone, conversing. Loki had usually been with Thor.

“He is, and always has _been_ , an Asgardian. Worse yet, he is an _Aesir_. Odin’s son. One of the high ones, sitting in their golden seats. Isn’t that how it’s done?” he barked.

His brother takes Loki’s outburst in stride. “Laufey slew Odin. It was the next logical step to take the key to Asgard’s future in the form of his only son.” Byleister’s eyes held Loki’s, unflinching. Loki cursed his brother then for such unwavering brotherly affection.

“Better he had but killed him. Then I never would have—” Loki raises his fist to his mouth and flexes his fingers wide. “And he should have killed Frigga. She was full with the second son. The pretty, fat one who sings to the sky like a blank-eyed ice-worm.”

“Loki.”

“Did you know? You were there.”

Loki means the day when they returned from war. Byleister had been young, but able to go with their father.

Byleister knows what he is asking. “No. There had been many taken as hostage, but none kept. Not for so long. And none concealed as Thor had been.”

“How then? How could he have done it? Laufey hated seidr and Thor is no shape shifter. He can no sooner change his skin than he can wrestle the shade of Ymir’s cock.”

Byleister’s lips rise in amusement at Loki’s crassness. “I saw Laufey kill many back then. I saw him slay Odin from a distant grove. I was with him when he sealed the vault shut with nearly a river’s worth of ice. I saw him commit, perhaps, Asgard’s greatest loss.”

“And what would that be, aside from the theft of their babe of an heir.” Loki cannot bother to remove the bite from his voice.

“Their gatekeeper fell that day. It was a valiant battle, though short. And he had managed to trip Laufey during it. They say he could see all the realms and beyond even those. He could see in the deep black tide of the Ash and further still.”

Loki hums, thinking on if his father had ever made mention of the fight. “I do not remember him ever speaking of this Heimdall. He does not sound like a being to be overlooked.”

“Would he speak of such a shame as falling during a fight with such an Aesir?”

“Aesir, even? Hm.” Loki sighs and buries his face in his hands. He is quiet for a long while. He feels his chest throb.

“But I do not know how he did it.”

Loki is quiet and he thinks of all those in the realm, few as they are, who can whisper runes as he can.

Byleister halts his thoughts. “And what did Mimir reveal to you for so high a cost?”

Which cost, Loki thinks. But he says, “I snapped the bone using ice, threw them at the floor of his would-be altar. It was a golden box of fog and ill tormented things. His voice filled everywhere around me and it was...it was,” Loki lets his voice fade, reliving the moment. Then, “It was entirely too unhelpful!”

“What did you seek from Mimir?”

“I sought a way to access all the realms. I wanted to know the ways between worlds. I gleaned enough from talking with the Queen and her pudgy brat of a son when we all first journeyed there. Enough to bring Thor and I straight inside their realm’s orchards. She was far too helpful, too happy to be answering my questions. I now know why.”

“And what did Mimir tell you?”

Loki takes a breath, deep, calming his thoughts enough to remember the riddle for what it had been. “The morning shines golden in Asgard, once twice, now only once. You hold the crowned first in your heart, and the second in your mind.” Loki allows the words to hang as Byleister digests them. He has a thoughtful look upon his heavy brow.

“There is more you are not telling me, brother.”

Loki curls his lip but does not answer him. Byleister shifts in his seat.

“He was speaking of Thor.”

“Obviously,” Loki says immediately.

“Peace, brother. I merely seek to help you.” The words are said so softly and _gently_ that Loki has a hard time believing they came from Byleister at all. He is suddenly struck with the memory of spending hours sitting together and having Byleister braid his hair.

Byleister is oblivious to Loki’s train of thought, for he continues on seamlessly. “Shines golden...I am thinking of their sun. But then that would count for only one of two times it shines. I am thinking the other is Thor?”

“Yes. It is what I came to as well.”

“Now, forgive me but...” Loki knows it is coming. He knows, but he cannot keep his heart from stuttering when his brother says, “But I believe what Mimir meant by your heart, he spoke of Thor as well. You seek to travel, Asgard being your first realm outside of Jotunheim...perhaps that is what he meant when he spoke of the mind.

“You are smarter than many think you to be, brother. You will have to be careful not to let them know.”

Byleister smiles his large, toothy smile at him. Loki’s seen it only a handful of times in his life.

Loki sits back on his hands, legs still as he dangles his feet some six feet above the floor. Byleister watches him.

“What are you not telling me, Loki?”

Loki shakes his head, almost missing the weight of curving bone upon his brow, the jangling of fine chain and jewels. “It is a minor thing. Something I have only been able to half figure out.”

“Perhaps I can help?”

Loki raises his eyes, wondering. “He spoke of seeking our own realm. Jotunheim. And of kin. He told me they are one and the same. He spoke of Thor too much to not also mean him.”

“Perhaps he means Asgard.”

“He was once a Jotun, you know that.”

“Aye, but maybe he has come to regard Asgard as a home.”

“As a head? As a war prize? I hardly think that is likely.” Loki scoffs at his brother, who sits quiet in his seat. “Jotunheim. He must mean Jotunheim, there is no other option. I thought Thor to be of this realm until only yesterday, he had to have been referring to Jotunheim.”

“What else did he say to put such panic in you?”

Loki’s eyes widen. He sits up, straight as a board and shakes his head.

“Loki, I know when you are spooked. Tell me.”

Loki bites his lip. He wants to tear the skin off for all the good it will do him to utter the words that have been sitting resilient and unyielding in his stomach for what already seems an eon. He’s not slept and food does not settle in his stomach, so eating is pointless at this point.

“You must trust me if I am to help you.”

Slowly, Loki says, “And what if helping me entitled invading Asgard once more?”

Byleister raises the slow of his brow. “Invading? Loki, this is hardly cause to start a war—”

_You will lose both soon enough._

Loki levels a somber stare at him. “Perhaps it is the perfect reason.”

Byleister, ever the level-headed, battle-hardened warrior-brother-councilman, sighs. “You are heartsick. Give it some thought.”

“I have given it all the thought it needs!” Loki spits, ignoring the frighteningly accurate notion of _heartsick_.

“You do not need an army behind you to bring back Thor.”

Loki’s lips part and his snappish armament deflates.

Byleister eyes him gently.

Retrieve Thor...

Loki had not thought of that.

“He belongs to Asgard, brother,” he says instead, bile rising in his throat. “I can do nothing. He is no longer mine to have.”

He never was, Loki’s mind tells him.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing Thor does upon waking is remember the small gift Loki had smuggled into his palm. The obscene jade fertility figure.

He rolls onto his back and palms at the many pockets and spaces of his clothing, finding nothing. He remembers the axe, and how Loki had a way of hiding things until he had need of them. Vanished until he the need arose. The gift was lost to him.

A heavy sorrow catches him then, lying like stone along his throat and chest.

The tears come and he finds it hard to catch his breath, for all that he is silent as he lies there.

Thor had almost forgotten in his dreams.

\--

There is a knock on his door some hours later, when the sunlight spills through the silk and patterns the floor in golden hues of red and orange. Thor feels overwhelmed by such warmth. It is everywhere. But it is not painful or unpleasant in the sense of discomfort.

He neither allows not negates whoever it is knocking and so they gingerly open the door to peek their head in. It is some young boy, carrying a scroll.

He spies Thor in bed and his eyes go wide. He tries to find anywhere to look but directly at Thor. Thor knows he is decent for this realm, being beneath both linen and cotton as he is, and feels odd from the reaction.

“What is that?” he asks.

The boy cautiously brings his eyes to Thor and in them Thor sees both wonder and fear. The boy is curious. He once looked upon Laufey and Loki both in the same way as a child.

“Here, hand it to me. It is alright,” Thor says, voice softer. He knows his face must be flushed from lying awake most of the night, eyes red and puffy from the thought of Loki.

The boy hands it to him quickly, almost tossing it at his outstretched hand.

“Thank you very much,” Thor murmurs, and it sends the boy into a large smile, all teeth.

Thor is so caught off guard by it that he is smiling himself as the boy runs off, leaving him alone with the door shut once more. The smile fades and he feels reality seep back in, dredging and silent all at once. He sighs and turns the parcel over in his hands.

Thor unties the dry twine tying it shut and sees only a few words inked there. The script is small and looping. Graceful and elegant. It is written in the casual language of runes that Jotunheim uses and he can read it well enough. He wonders how the Queen of Asgard must know such a thing of their culture, and suddenly remembers she gave him another letter to read. Alone.

The letter in his hands simply says to meet her in the throne room, after taking the time to learn his quarters. But no later than when the sun is high enough to cast his shadow along the floor of his room.

Odd way of telling time, he thinks.

Thor rolls the scroll back up and reties it, setting it on the bedside table. He reaches inside the tunic he wears and retrieves the letter. The wax seal is still intact but the parchment is crumpled slightly from sleep, and he feels foolish for forgetting it for so long.

Thor is afraid to read what is inside.

He tucks it back away.

Not now.

\--

Frigga smiles warmly at him as he meets her in the great golden hall. Wood spills dark and rich along the walls and floor, thin gold raining over the panels like cream or silk, large swirling patterns that make his eyes water at the sight. The throne of Odin, he’d been told, was a huge, gaudy, despicable thing. A block of ore that sat useless, untouched. That when Odin once took his place there, he could see all the world and chose to ignore many.

But gazing upon it now wipes those bitter half-whispers from his mind. It is illuminating, beautiful, elegant. Its presence is power and secrets all at once and Thor knows that had he been born here, raised as a prince in the realm he was robbed from, that he would covet and admire such a seat as this.

“It is called Hlidskjalf. It is the Allfather’s seat,” Frigga tells him, words soft. Thor can only nod, feeling numb. “He would gaze upon all the realms and see the cosmos unfold. It was a heavy burden upon his shoulders, so much that he would often fall to sleeping for months at a time to regain the peace of mind, the strength, needed to be so great a leader.”

Thor takes two steps forward, unconscious, wanting to see the way the sunlight that filters through the high beams to sprinkle soft yellow along the throne.

Frigga does not take her eyes from him.

The light makes him think of her golden curls, flowing soft around her shoulders and back and that it is so much like his own, too much. That it is she he received it from.

He swallows, the action catching painfully inside him. “Odin is dead. He no longer sits there.”

Frigga hums. “Yes. But it is his as much as it always was.”

Thor knows it is a vague mockery to his being taken from this world. That though he may be Odin’s son, it is not Thor’s throne. He turns to meet her eyes, but there is only a lingering sadness there, old and faint with the years. A sort of pain that sits in the belly and claws at you when you think it is finally done, no matter how long it’s been absent.

It is not said to mock him, not in the slightest.

Thor realizes for the first time that he is gazing at his mother.

Frigga is at his side, her hands at his shoulders, his face, before he even knows that he is weeping.

\--

They move to a garden, her gardens, she tells him. A private, warm, and bright paradise filled with chattering birds and swaying leaves that rain green and orange against the light. The distance heralds the sounds of life, the distant churn of blade meeting wooden shield on the sparring fields, a sound he knows most and picks out first.

He misses his shield brothers.

Frigga pokes at his shyness, his sorrow, until she has his tongue loose enough to tell her of his childhood. Of how he’d been raised as a slave boy and had caught Loki’s eye before Loki had pride enough to rebuke his father’s abuse and return it in kind with tricks and seidr.

Thor tells her of how he would watch out for Loki, shadowing his steps, protecting him from the large feet of those who walked Laufey’s palace. From those who found no slight in injuring a prince, no matter if he was a runt of not.

He tells her of how he’d been treated much the same as Loki, worse in most cases, for he had had no royal lineage to protect his head from colliding with the ice of his superiors if they found issue in his service. If he forgot a message, or fetched the wrong type of food. In a whisper he tells her how he was mocked for his inability to call ice to his aid. How they called him weak and dumb and inadequate. The words stuck with him.

Frigga listens, silent throughout. Her pale blue eyes match his Aesir form and it is a likeness he still cannot overcome. Thor catches himself unblinking at her appearance several times in his tales. He stumbles over words, nervous as he is not a skald—that was Loki’s expertise, words—nervous that he is in the presence of a queen of a world not his own, but one he would have ruled over. It is strange, sitting here and telling her his story, and yet he continues to do so. He can do nothing else.

He tells her of how Loki came to him spattered in the blood of an uprising and claimed him his first guard.

“And why did you follow him so easily?” It is the only question she asks during their conversation, and he finds he must answer truthfully. She has a knowing gaze and he feels to lie before her would render the intent useless.

“He was as a brother to me. There was no other option.” Because Loki is my King, my lover, my family, he thinks.

She gives the smallest of smiles, cradling his hand between gentle fingers.

He cannot remember her before he was taken, but he knows that in her eyes she sees the babe she lost to a warlord so many years ago. Perhaps she sees Odin somewhere in his face as well. A man whose features he will never know.

Thor places his other hand over her fingers, genuinely glad for her presence, her existence. That he can confide in her so easily though she is as much a strange to him as anyone in this realm. But he feels he can speak with her, can confide. Can tell her things he never even confessed to Loki.

Thor squeezes her hand between his and Frigga’s smile turns bright, her eyes wet.

\--

The firelight burns dark ochre and casts long shadows over the ranks of ice that Loki calls to life over the edge of his pallet, snapping them off and chewing on the edges. It has always been a nervous habit, and should he prick the soft meat of his tongue and taste copper, then all the better for it grounds him. It makes him focus on his thoughts should they wander.

It’s been almost a week and he thinks on how Thor is faring in Asgard. He knows he will be lost and left with nothing to do. He wonders if the warriors are rebelling against such a controversy. Lost Asgardian heir raised as Jotun, their greatest enemy. It would be nearly laughable were it not Thor in question.

His Thor.

An angry hiss rises from his throat and he lets it out as a growl as he flips to his back, throwing the spike into his ceiling. It sticks. Loki crafts thin needles in his palm and throws them above his head, one after another, striking into the ceiling and staying there.

He still thinks on who it could have been who charmed Thor’s appearance. To alter it so grandly that to put an imitation atop it rendered the first undone. Loki knows that it is powerful seidr indeed. Something he doesn’t entirely understand. Shapeshifting is an ever growing talent inside him and one he has yet to fully master, and had until that moment, never encountered such a guise so masterfully—though not without its flaws—executed.

Loki doesn’t know who did it.

Someone who knew Laufey well enough, who Laufey trusted enough to cast seidr in his palace and conceal an Asgardian for an age. What use had Laufey for the boy? Frigga hadn’t ever contacted the realm before Loki received her parchment by wing of her great black raven. The fearsome thing with its glowing eyes.

It still sits unknown inside him, along with half of that damnable riddle, and Loki hates he cannot piece it out.

There were only a few he knew here, in the immediate surrounding lands that dared to learn seidr under Laufey’s rule.

Loki thinks of his mother and rises to seek her out.

\--

He does not make it.

Past the first corridor he turns down, Loki sees Angrboda.

And then, as if an avalanche, he knows.

Loki hurls a bolt of vapid green light at the giant, a feral, foreign roar ripping from his chest. Loki cannot think, it is as if the seidr simply pours from his hands, dashes from the tips of his fingers before he can have thought to rein it in.

But Angrboda is clever and knows how to ward Loki’s advance, and so hurls bolts of his own. The language of ice begins to fall from his tongue and Loki must dodge a large sheer of ice jutting from the ground just before his next step. He twirls on his heel and nearly stumbles back.

There is a lull in the fight and Loki is heaving breath, puffing hot into the cold night.

“I warned you, Loki.”

“Not like this. Not like _this_!” Loki slowly presses his fist to the ice beside him and pushes himself to standing.

Angrboda relaxes his defensive stance and straightens, peering down at Loki, so small before him. He is smart enough at least to keep adequate distance between them. He remembers the sight of Loki tearing Laufey’s heart out.

“Why? What use did Thor have for him?”

“Laufey believed there would be a use, one day.”

“ _Why_?” Loki demands, calm fleeing him. His thoughts scatter and he thinks of every moment spent in Thor’s company, of Laufey’s disapproving stare.

“Grant me my tongue, King?”

Loki just stares at him, and nods once, short.

“It has always been my thinking that Laufey suspected two outcomes could come of the war. That one, he killed Odin and ruled, bound to his realm forevermore for who was he to ever weave seidr enough to build an entry to the Asbru upon Jotunheim?”

“Never.”

“Aye. The second outcome was that, had he failed and Odin lived, he had Odin’s crown prince in his arms, stolen to a harsh realm only a desperate warrior would invade after such a staggering battle. The losses were tremendous you see. Jotunheim was a brighter place, more of our people thrived before the war. I believe Laufey lost a part of himself in the fight for power.”

“You speak freely,” Loki admonishes, taking in this new information. New perspective. He has never heard of such a telling as Angrboda’s, and certainly not from Angrboda’s own tongue.

“In this, one must. He was afraid I think.” Here, the giant hangs his head, as if yet hesitant of what he claims. But Loki cared not for his father and so listens greedily to the words. “Fearful of Odin invading, for it was no secret that had we failed, we would have been left to perish. Odin was a grand Allfather and a wicked one.”

“Laufey would have done the same.”

“He would have had he the ability. But he had no Gungnir. He had no fabled seat to gaze upon the worlds. He had but ice and shadow. And Odin’s first born.”

“Thor was a bargaining piece then.” It is not a question and it sits like poison on Loki’s tongue.

Angrboda nods simply. “Laufey’s plan was thus; blind the golden realm by killing their gatekeeper, steal all that was useful and could be traded, lives included, and if possible, kill his oldest enemy, Odin.”

“And he did all that. Laufey _won_ , so why keep the boy? Why allow him to drag me around and live here as one of us?” Loki does not think of how, half the time, it was he dragging Thor around. Thor had been his only other companion beside Byleister. And even then his brother would away to battles far and foreign. Thor had always been his. His only ally. His only friend.

And it was built upon a lie.

Angrboda nears him enough so that Loki must crane his neck to meet his eyes. He readies a length of edged ice, long and deadly, in his hand just in case.

But he does not need it for Angrboda presses no further.

“He came to me and asked me to hide the child. He could barely even look upon him. I made him as alike to us as best I could, even shaved his head for a while. But no matter what I did, it kept coming back so I let it be. The boy was taken after his second year to the tribes along the wastes, so his secret could be kept, so the boy could be kept alive. None bother the waste-tribes, as you know. He was returned as a small child, no larger than you, to begin his conditioning as a slave to the crown. Laufey never again spoke to me of the matter once I had charmed the boy to look like us and to withstand the climate.”

Loki shakes his head, unyielding in his disbelief. “What need had Laufey to take such pains to keep a child alive so long after his purpose? Odin’s death must have been known, absolutely by then.”

Angrboda sighs, putting space between them once more. Loki sees his gaze flicker about Loki’s frame.

“The second outcome had included within itself a third.”

“What do you mean?”

“Peace. Between both realms.”

“Laufey laughed at the idea of peace,” Loki huffed, lips quivering in a burst of mad amusement.

“Had you been born a female, I think he intended much. Had Odin lived, he would have been cowed enough by the threat of the death of his son to consider.”

Loki can comprehend the logic of such a notion. But _Laufey_. Laufey was never one to entreat peace. The idea was—is—ridiculous.

Loki reminds himself of this, before he allows himself that he knows just what the taste of Thor’s skin beneath his tongue is like. Of what could have been—

“No. Never, Laufey was a cruel warlord. He slew whole tribes. He disregarded _me_ , your supposed peace treaty because I am not so large as you all. I who was unworthy to bear a son to the royal line! He was a vile, ugly thing, filled with hate and who lusted after conflict. I cannot take your words for truth.”

“You must, for they are the truth.”

“What possible reason have I for trusting your words? There is nothing. I should send you to the wastes.”

But Loki is tired, and his voice reflects that and Angrboda can hear it all too well. Loki bites his own tongue.

“It could have been remedied, had you been born with a cunny like the Aesir enjoy. I hear they are bloodhounds at feast with such flesh before them.”

“You are as vile as he,” Loki tells him, tone steel.

“And you are a shape shifter. Laufey knew the seidr in you as soon as you were in your mother’s arms. A further insult to his _prince_. The treaty could have been done had you been but one or neither, but you are both. There is no peace in such chaos a union as twisted as that could bring.”

Loki sees there is disgust lingering in the tilt of Angrboda’s brow, in the set of his lower lip. It makes his stomach quiver, for he knows if Angrboda so chose, he could shift shape just as Loki is teaching himself to. Could carry a child if he knew but the words to will it, and thus seal a bond between realms and enemies.

Angrboda wields the same runes as Loki and still Loki is treated as the _other_ and oh, how Loki wishes his blade could reach but a little higher.

Jotunheim does not welcome him. It never has.

His home was in Thor, and now he has lost even him.

Too distraught to bring steady voice to the words poised on the edge of his tongue, Loki raises an arm and rips himself away from this place.

He leaves Jotunheim entirely.


	3. Chapter 3

They are eating in peace, Thor trying to slowly stomach the fact that Balder, the young man he had but briefly met, is his brother. By blood.

Frigga had led him to the kitchens, showing him the great baskets of fruit and wheat and bread and working people buzzing around preparing it all. A living hive of people and wafting, mouth-watering smells, a roaring fire in a pit in that far back. She assigns him the duty of filling a plate with all manner of fruit and meat he cannot recognize, intending to quiz him on what taste he likes best.

It had been going pleasantly. He had been enjoying himself.

Thor sets down his fork, silver and carved with delicate decorative whorls that ripple beneath the pad of his thumb as he worries it on the table top.

“I miss him,” he says suddenly, sick to his stomach.

He means Loki.

Frigga knows, he can see it in her face. She nods, somber.

“Grief is meant to be felt. Whether it is fated to be healed or erased entire.”

Thor doesn’t understand. So he only lowers his head, too suddenly exhausted for words, and resumes his meal of fruit and poultry.

There is a breeze that flits through the room and it reminds him of home.

\--

“It’s healthy, it’s natural,” he tells himself, as he retches his lunch into the familiar barrel in his bathing quarters. He tips it over and washes it down the drain after.

Grief.

Thor feels sick. Too sick to pretend he is anything but.

\--

The breeze fills his room and Thor misses his old skin. He still feels so odd being pale and golden and _hairy_. He has hair upon his arms and legs, tucked into the delicate flesh in the bend of his arms, nestled in the gathering of his thighs where his cock rests lazy. He feels odd being as he is at all, lying here in Asgard in the dark. But it also feels like something hidden has lifted from him. Some nameless thing.

He feels himself, but that he’s also lost himself.

Perhaps it is a bit of both.

The breeze is cold and comforting and gifts him early slumber full of silent dreams.

\--

Thor wakes and doesn’t know to do with himself.

There is no page boy at his door this morning, no request to go and see Frigga. There is nothing commanding him to stay in his quarters.

Thor dresses in a light green tunic, the color reminding him of the eyes Loki wore in this realm, and loose pants held by leather twine and tucked into dark boots with a buckle on the side of each. Asgardian clothing is different than on Jotunheim. Lighter, simpler, decorative. Armor seems to be uncommon out of training and battle. They do not have fearsome beasts to wrestle should they chance a walk outside.

Thor is bored and knows he will have a shaky stomach should he stay and think of Loki and home and so he braids his hair back and leaves his room.

\--

He goes to Frigga’s gardens.

She is not there. And Thor feels as if he is invading her personal space. Her paradise. It truly is the only name he can summon for the place.

But she had made clear it was his to view and lounge in as it was hers, and it is a gift of nature and comfort and _trust_. So much so that Thor feels he has no idea what he should do sitting here, staring at the plants and strange, tiny birds.

Thor observes the fragile, brightly colored birds that flutter around the space. They dip long yellow and orange beaks into succulent flowers and nestle their feathered breasts against large leaves and full fruit as they sway on branches and dip together in song. It’s pleasant and Thor finds a new form of peace descend over him.

For the briefest handful of hours he feels okay, and allows himself to forget he is not home, that he is not with Loki. He pretends that kingdoms never rise or fall or that parents could never hate their children and that lovers could hardly be so forgotten by the other. He pretends that he is but a man of anywhere, enjoying the day. He pretends he was born here, raised in this very garden, and that he is a child of nature and earth, of joy and birdsong and it feels right. It feels right.

His blood sings and he smiles for it, tears welling gratefully beneath his closed eyelids.

Thor can almost believe it.

\--

Frigga watches her son weep in the company of the flowers and trees and sees a little of Balder in the hunch of his shoulders. He looks like Odin, only softer. The Norns favored him after his mother in the curve of his lips, his long fingers, the color and wave of his hair. His disposition she is still taking note of. He is still shy, sorrowful, hesitant. She has managed to pull a few genuine smiles from him, but mostly they are small, shielded. She thinks of Loki and how stricken they both were upon that last day.

Loki.

She watches her boy and weaves at her window until he manages to dry his eyes and gather the courage to venture from the gardens.

Frigga hums and continues with her work.

\--

Thor steps quietly around the halls of the palace for it is still early and there are not many about. He doesn’t know if they know who he is. But he receives enough stares that he thinks they at least must see the resemblance to Frigga that he himself can pick out.

Then he sees the prince. The other one—his brother—

Balder stands, paused mid-step at the apex of a two large hallways lined with looming columns.

Balder stares at him.

Thor stares back.

Thor turns around and takes another hall.

\--

Loki stays in the in between. The dark corners beneath the stars and above the seas.

It is a quiet place.

Loki cannot stand to think of Thor without wanting to simply return to him and crush those who would dare impede his will. But he cannot, for then he would surely lose Thor. Entirely. Loki knows not the way of Asgard and so he cannot know if Thor is currently locked away in a dungeon being fed poison or sat upon Odin’s throne, memory wiped clean of all he had been.

Loki doesn’t know.

So he practices seidr.

He spends his time changing his skin, his shape. He passes talons over the hot breath of Asgard’s star, sears the tips of feathers and flakes the spread of scales when he passes through the cold void above hurtling comets and soaring planets.

He breaks too close to the surface of the world once and almost lost his breath. Death would be a cold, empty thing up here. Meaningless. And Thor would never be the wiser.

It is a notion both appealing and disgusting to Loki and so he focuses on the task he’s set himself.

Soon enough he flies as a falcon to the opal sky of Asgard and spends days circling the clouds and dipping low through forests. He spies a pack of wolves and follows them, watching. He eats in his true form, for he misses crafting fires and working simple magic to bend the elements around him. He rushes the water icy cold against his bare skin as he dips nude into a lake. He stays there for a time in his Jotun skin, enjoying the coolness.

Loki hides himself from the realm.

He thinks on Angrboda’s words. Toys with the idea of what exactly it would take to focus so much energy on shifting into the form of a woman. He wonders how long he could sustain it. He wonders how Thor would regard him then. If he would look upon Loki at all.

Loki sighs and dips his head beneath the calm surface, stifling his thoughts.

\--

It is not that Loki has never seen a woman. Not that he hasn’t ever taken lovers before he found Thor in his bed.

It is the permanence that nags his mind. The risk of staying in the form too long.

It’s another week of this before Loki finally shushes his thoughts and shakes himself back to reality, remembering why he is here and what he must do. Find Thor.

He takes to the sky once more and scans the skies for Asgard’s towering palace.

There is a raven that shadows him for a time.

He spies the golden spires spearing the distant clouds.

The raven breaks off, ascending higher into the sky as Loki approaches.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was at about this point in the word count before I decided to submit the first chapter. Currently I have about 10k written so the chapters will be a little slower.

Balder stops him some time later, after days have passed since they last saw each other. He holds Thor about the wrist with a firm grip and peers with worried brow into Thor’s eyes, hoping. Thor has been avoiding him.

Thor has just left Frigga’s gardens for the countless time. Balder knew he would be here.

Thor tears his hand away, peering down at the boy, for Balder is but a young man, barely a warrior by the stance he always holds and the way Thor has seen him interact with others. Their years are shortly separated though Thor has fought battles and served his King before he’d truly understood what loyalty and _love_ for your ruler could be.

Thor feels so much older in the presence of his stranger brother and feels cocky for it.

But still, an apology rises to his lips. He holds it back, swallows it down. He keeps his glare heavy and hopes Balder will leave as he’s done all week.

But he does not.

“I only wish to know you, br—”

“Do not,” Thor says, low. “Do not call me that.”

Balder’s throat bobs when he swallows, and he nods after a moment. The tension is rife between them. Thor wants only to return to his chambers. So that he may have peace to bathe, relish the quiet, the cold breeze his large windows allow, and think of Loki the only time he allows himself to.

Balder clasps his hands before him, offering them in deference. He inclines his head of shaggy auburn hair.

“I do so apologize, Thor. I have been entirely too unkempt these past days. I admit I’ve been excited for the chance to speak with you.”

Thor notes that Balder’s eyes are bright with something he would name innocence. Definitely not a warrior, Thor thinks.

“I can already tell you we have nothing in common, Balder of Asgard.”

The other’s mouth hangs open slightly, a gape. Then he closes it quickly, licks his lips and quirks a brow. “Only time can reveal that to us. I merely wanted to extend to you an invitation to a feast.”

“Feast?” Nerves flower along the bowl of his gut.

“The jarls are curious of our newest housemate.” When Thor turns slightly away intending to leave, Balder rushes out, “Frigga would have you sit at her table. As her son.”

Thor keeps his eyes on the ground. The words sit hot in his chest before he even says them, “I am not her son.”

There is a hum and Thor is reminded of the woman they speak of. Balder hums like her. “She adores you despite your opinion. Truly, Thor…Mother dearly wishes to see her family whole.”

Thor meets Balder’s eyes and huffs a doubtful laugh. “Even with a husband dead and her stolen son returned, a stranger?”

“Especially then.”

“Why?”

“Because she loves her family, her children. She is Frigga.” And it is the way Balder says it, the way he looks honestly confused by Thor’s words. The way he looks entirely too convinced that Thor _is_ his brother, when that is not true in the least.

Thor is Loki’s.

“I don’t even know you. It’s a play you put on for your own benefit, for your people.” Thor is aware he sounds scathing, angry. He feels some guilt wash through him at speaking ill of Frigga, who has treated him with nothing but firm facts and kindness. With _mothering_. He never had a mother, and so does not know what to do with it.

Balder shakes his head slowly. “No, Thor. No, I—we—” His throat works in another swallow. “You never knew her growing up. You did not see her as she rebuilt her realm and had to tote me around on her hip all the while helping those who asked her for it.” He reaches a finger behind his ear and scratches at an itch, though Thor cannot tell if it is genuine or out of nerves. “She was sad.”

“For a son she never knew?” Thor growls at him. The anger sweeps through him, unasked for. He feels like he is going to burst and it is too much, too abrupt.

Balder regards him seriously. “Have you never wondered after the father and mother you did not know? If you had siblings? If you had any home to speak of that was left?”

Thor remembers his times as a small child only vaguely. He remembers fishing in the tiny pockets of ice cracked open for his use because he’d been too tiny to do it himself. His time outside of Loki’s company is vague and hazy.

He remembers being brought to the ice hall of Laufey. How fearsome and frightful the sight of such a large giant looming above him and claiming him as servant to the throne and the wellbeing of his children.

He remembers most of all of his childhood the moments he spent with Loki. How he would find Loki’s fingers worming into his palm and slotting through his to grasp tight whenever he was afraid of being caught by his father at whatever latest mischief he’d gotten into. When he ran away from the abuse rained down on him as a young boy, as the royal, seidr-working runt.

He remembers only Loki for Loki was all that ever mattered to him.

“How can I miss what I never knew?” And if his voice shakes on the thought of Loki, in Jotunheim without him, _living_ , then Balder does not let on.

Balder shrugs, a frown stretching his pouty lips. “I miss my father, though he was dead before I was born.”

Thor feels his mouth twitch, and he is suddenly sorry. He realizes then that they do have this one thing in common.

They never knew their father, and they never would.

\--

“Please come. You will be able to spy those who reside here at the very least. There will be plenty of food, and if you wish to retire early, you need only let our Mother know.”

Thor chews his lip, and because he feels guilty for speaking wrongly of Frigga and for disregarding Balder so quickly, he accepts.

“Aye. Let us go.”

\--

“Do they know who I am?” Thor asks. It is the only question he voices.

Balder smiles at him, clearly intending for it to be reassuring.

“They know you are a son of Asgard, returned home.”

Thor feels his spirits drift yet lower at Balder’s words, how happy he sounds.

It is a lie to Thor’s heart and yet he feels guilty.

\--

There are too many eyes on him.

He sits to the right of Frigga, Balder sat beside him. They face the length of the hall and it is filled with Asgardians who murmur amongst themselves and stare openly.

Thor hears one whisper from a table close to them, “Are they sure he is not Jotun in hiding?”

Thor scowls at the man and he quiets instantly, but his gaze lingers on Thor’s face. Thor does not like it.

He frequently meets eyes with Frigga who has managed to keep a smile upon her face for the better part of an hour.

There are gods and goddesses seated all around him, staring at him, taking him in. Appraising and approving, or disapproving as he sees in most faces.

They do not like his sudden arrival. He could laugh for they have that in common at least.

To combat all this, he eats his fill. Let them watch, he thinks as he piles his plate high several times.

On Jotunheim, feasting was reserved for the spread of fish and brine, the rare fruits Loki and he would bring back to their rooms to eat in peace together. It had always been better than eating with the guard. It was precious time, intimate. He misses that.

Thor’s bitter smile fades entirely and Frigga notices.

She nods before he even realizes he’s been given permission to leave.

\--

He feels he’s failed both families.

Failed Loki for being born to the wrong realm.

Failed Asgard and Frigga and hopeful, innocent Balder by being raised in Jotunheim. By being taught to hate those who are so eager to now welcome him.

\--

There is a breeze that follows his heels all the back to his door. He is still so unused to feeling the chill, and the constant rake of claws over his skin raises the fire hair that seems to cover him _everywhere_. It was an interesting experience the first few times but he has grown annoyed with the sensation.

It makes him miss the ice. Makes him wish more than ever that he could just summon what little ice he wanted to feel at peace. To have one thing of familiarity.

But that was a familiarity never meant for him in the first place, and so he grieves yet another loss.

Now he is either stoking fires in his hearth or battling his foreign skin by baring it until he freezes.

Thor pulls the furs and silks down and strips until he is wearing his skin. He refuses the cold, welcomes the constant shivers until he is shaking.

He brings the heel of both palms to his eyes and presses so that he knows he will not cry. He is past that. It makes sudden heat bloom in his belly and gather between his thighs, aching. Thor palms himself, unwanting of a lust that he does not want to sate lest Loki be with him. Never mind that his cock has not stirred since Loki tore himself from the realm.

He stays like that for over an hour before the cold shakes him to sleep.

\--

The dream he has is of Loki’s face above his, lips wide in a joyful grin.

When he wakes up Loki is not there and his eyes are wet.

He feels his stomach knock against the path of his throat and rolls to the side, emptying himself of all he ate the night before.

Thor had thought he was done with waking like this.

It is not healthy, he thinks. Not at all.


	5. Chapter 5

Loki stays as a falcon and circles the towering spires of gold, spying those who enter and leave the palace.

Loki sees Thor only once, walking with Frigga. He retreats back into the palace soon enough and it is the sad set to Thor’s face that has Loki thinking there is still yet a chance for him. For Loki.

Thor is his after all.

\--

Loki disguises himself always as someone else.

He spends his days walking about the market and the winding roads between their home dwellings. He sleeps in an inn with illusioned coin.

Only when the curiosity and the theories become too much does Loki change his shape to that of a woman. He thinks of the face and form of someone he’d seen earlier in the day.

He drops the change almost immediately.

A second flight about the palace and he doesn’t see Thor again.

Time drags on and Loki thinks of how Thor is faring here. The simple fact he is not being caged beneath their city is enough to bring a swarm of fluttering relief to his belly each time he thinks of Thor, just walking off. Free. Or nearly. He is still in their palace.

At night, when exhaustion and wandering thoughts sit heavy and loose in his mind, does he shift shape. Experiences the feeling of having a slit where his cock should be. It is strange. He doesn’t like it.

Loki tries again the next night and falls asleep wearing the shape of a woman but wakes as himself.

He catches more than one man staring as he walks about Asgard with the guise. It is freeing to not be known as himself, and he quickly learns he likes sneaking about very much. He learns their culture, their speech, their mannerisms. The Asgardians are loud and busy and there are far too many of them. He fingers delicate jewels and palms beautiful figurines of wood and stone. He remembers he has the jade figure still hidden away.

Loki reads their books. He thinks he would enjoy seeing Alfheim one day.

He thinks of Thor.

\--

One morning, Loki wakes and has the idea to only change part of himself, not the whole. The idea is enticing, intriguing. A new puzzle to piece out.

\--

It rains in Asgard, and Thor is shocked.

On Jotunheim it snows or hails. When there is the hint of rain the vicious wind freezes it in moments. Children had the game of freezing the pellets as they fell and hurtling them at their friends, laughing. Another activity Thor had been excluded from.

But here it falls wet and warm and Thor finds he is standing with his head bent back, eyes wide open. The water stings his eyes but he doesn’t care.

It’s beautiful.

\--

“Does it snow in Asgard?” Thor asks Balder one afternoon. The sun is high overhead and the clouds crawl over the sky slowly.

Thor knows it means rain will come soon, the next day most likely, maybe even tonight. The nights have been colder and the afternoons brisk, but warm.

It is the first time Thor has sought Balder out for conversation. Balder’s grin is statement enough of his joy for that.

“Not too much here. It snows high in the mountains and along many of the valleys surrounding the north. Here we’re lucky if we get a few inches. It is beautiful as it melts from the gold though,” he adds.

Thor offers a nod and then heads off, lost in thought.

\--

The next day it’s raining and Balder runs into Thor, who is beaming at the sky for all of a moment before he realizes Balder is watching him. He approaches Balder after a moment of hesitation, his lip stuck between his teeth.

“Balder…when does your snow fall?”

“Winter. I don’t know how it’s like on Jotunheim but here…here we have seasons. Right now it’s Autumn. Winter will come soon.”

Thor nods, serious.

Balder raises a brow. “Why, Thor?”

“Your climate is fascinating,” Thor says before he can help himself. His eyes are wide, excited. But his lips twist at the end and Balder knows it as retreat.

Balder wants Thor to realize he has a home here, if he’ll only allow it.

“We have a library, if you’d like to see it?”

Thor makes a face but follows when Balder leads the way.

\--

He finds they have all sort of books on weather and farming.

Jotunheim couldn’t farm, the landscape never allowed it.

The idea of plowing the land and tilling the soil with steel and littering the seeds of all those brightly colored plants Thor had taken to sniffing the scents of—a pleasure he’d become too in love with the past weeks—made his mind boggle with the possibilities. He wanted to know what a tree looked like before it was a massive, towering thing. He wanted to see the fruit Asgard was so fond of start from those small seeds and fill with ripe juices and soft velvety skin.

If there is one thing Thor is unashamed to say he adores of Asgard it is their fruit.

Frigga had told him on his fifth day that he could dry them, save them for later. He’d taken to parting his portions out and keeping them in a linen wrap. He tells her it is for the smell that fills the room and a late night snack. But he thinks she knows that he intends them to be for Loki should he ever seen him again.

As the days go on and he collects more treats and learns all he can of the endless plants and the sky and clouds and sea, the more he realizes it is happiness within him that spurs these actions. Small and steady and growing, and he finds that while it has something to do with finding Loki again, it is mostly for himself.

He doesn’t feel as if he is being slowly swallowed up by his heart any longer, he feels like he has his own future. He has some opening to find Loki again.

It is in the middle of the night, when he is alone and lying shivering on top of his furs that the sorrow returns. But it lessens each night, for he holds it close. He knows it as something that must be.

It is his, just as the beauty and opportunities of this world are, and there is some peace in that.

Now when he dreams of Loki, he welcomes the tears he wakes to.

\--

Thor relishes the pain of lying awake and staring at the other side of his bed. He treasures it because he knows it as the place Loki _should_ be.

He thinks it is within his place, his power, that he can have Loki return to him.

He is not a slave here.

He never felt wrong in the company of Loki, but raised beside a king made one feel lesser. Loki often chased these thoughts away. Thor considers that it was a mistake thinking Loki thought him as less at all. For Loki looked as heartbroken as he when he’d left, and Thor thinks that maybe he understands it.

The feeling grows stronger with each day as the breeze bleeds to a steady constant of rain and the sky darkens considerably each night. Thor suspects it will be any day now.

Then the snow falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slowly falling in love with world building just as Thor is falling in love with Asgard ahhh. I've missed writing this sort of thing.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s begun to snow. It’s easier for Loki to leave his little inn as himself and simply walk about, concentrating only on veiling his presence and not his form.

He flies high one afternoon and sees Thor walking alone. He dives, taking the chance for what it is because it’s been so long, too long, and he wants to see him up close. The dive is sharp and a rush of biting, cruel wind against the tips of his newly-formed feathers and he alights upon a balcony some yards away. He takes on his true shape, and hastily moves to Thor’s side.

Thor is as Aesir in appearance as he last saw him but Loki drinks the sight of him in hungrily. Heaving huge breaths and smiling so wide his jaw aches as he circles Thor as he walks, or stands and stares out passageways, taking it all in. The snow calls to him. Loki knows it reminds him of home.

Thor is beautiful. Thor looks wretched. It twists sharp in Loki to see him smile only once, when the sky splits and the snow begins to fall in earnest. Then the smile falls to somewhere in between appearance and happiness, something lesser.

Loki shadows Thor throughout the palace as he walks to and fro.

He is himself, though he hides his presence altogether. He wants to reach out and tear Thor away into the hidden space between worlds where only he can go, he wants to fly above the world and bathe them both in fresh, still falling snow. But he can’t. He can’t.

Thor goes through an ornate archway that leads to a vibrant burst of flora. It nearly hurts Loki’s eyes to gaze upon it all. Thor sits on a stone bench.

It breaks something in him when he sees Thor’s eyes go wet when he hangs his head and breathes in deep. Loki suspects it is some sort of catharsis. He is alone in these gardens and Loki feels Thor comes here frequently.

Loki wants to reveal himself, reach out and touch Thor but still, he can’t. His fingers twitch at his sides for an hour before he at last allows himself to sit beside Thor. Loki can smell him. There are spices and rich floral undercurrents to him when his hair sways in the breeze, and it has Loki’s mouth watering. Thor smells different but he still smells like _Thor_. Like snow and ice and battle and that soft warmth he knew as comfort when he buried his face into the bend of Thor’s neck.

A rush of happiness fills his chest even as Thor suddenly stands, wiping at his eyes. Loki jumps up, making sure there is more than enough space for Thor to pass before following him out.

\--

Thor walks with steady steps, his eyes forward. He walks like he knows where he is headed, and Loki thinks he has not seen that from him in a long time. But it’s wrong. He does not eye his surroundings, foreign as they must be still. Loki has been in this realm for some time as well and he still wonders at how brazen the city is in its architecture. Thor cannot possibly be accustomed to living here.

Thor’s hands are clenched fists at his sides and his gate is hurried. His brow is quirked in that way that always gave his face the likeness of severe worrying.

Loki knows this confidence only as _seeming_ and now he hurries his pace to keep up with Thor. He does not know where he will go.

\--

The snow has calmed as it falls slow from the sky when Thor finally reaches his destination.

Thor had reentered the palace, gone straight through it and left out the back entrance. Thor kept his head down when he passed the guards, but Loki saw the cold, calculating looks they gave him. Their small, lightly colored eyes followed Thor even as he took to a sloping path that led to the larger fields for grazing animals that feasted on the grass lazily.

Loki felt suddenly angry with the guards, these men who would so judge the prince they risked so much to reclaim. Loki wanted to curse their limbs and make them fall and spit insults in their faces for so daring to mistrust such a good creature as Thor was.

But Loki held his emotions in. He kept them locked back because this was a world unfriendly to him _and_ Thor.

Loki knew for certain then that Thor’s home was not here. It never would be.

It’s been at least an hour since they left the palace. Thor is allowed to walk freely, to an extent it seems. Frigga surely had played a part in that.

Thor walks the path and watches the snow as it covers the ground, large patches of green still visible in areas. Loki thinks the snow will continue, increase, cover everything. It must. That was the way of it. If Asgard had snow, then it must also have storms, and ice, and all other forms Jotunheim did not. He’d read about their seasonal cycle. He envied the seemingly endless light that brightened their realm, but knew in the end he would prefer Jotunheim’s far-off star of a sun to the bright, looming orb that hovered above Asgard for most of the day.

Thor walks past these fields, past the grazing creatures that resembled the large bovines of Jotunheim that could gut the tallest of warriors—Asgard’s also lacked the towering horns, he noticed—and on to the lower fields.

The snow had gathered over the night, as it was denser here due to the incline. Loki sees Thor walk towards the center, where some people were bent over and clawing at the ground.

Loki thinks it’s an odd practice, but watches as Thor finds a spot amongst the crowning, leafy green and begins the task of tugging. Loki sees him unearth something large and red and round, covered in flaking dirt. The bottom is covered in spidery-thin tendrils that twist and sway as he moves it in the air, shaking the dirt off. Loki knows he is _farming_ , as Asgard seems to fondly represent in several tomes, but the thing he pulls out is odd and ugly. He crouches upon the edge of the path and watches as Thor pulls up three more of the large things, placing them on the ground beside him.

He does it again and again until he cannot carry anymore and then walks to deposit them in a large bin at the other pathway at the end of the row. Several of the people are placing their burden in these bins across the entire field.

Menial, taxing labor, Loki thinks. But Thor looks happy. He has none of the dread upon his brow or the twisting confine of sorrow painting his mouth.

Thor looks more at peace doing this repetitive task than Loki has seen him yet.

Loki watches Thor farm until the sun begins to set and the lack of light forces the others inside.

Thor stays until it is full dark and Loki with him.

\--

He retreats inside and Loki is there beside him as Thor waits for the hall to clear out. There are a few stragglers inside the main hall, the one he’d sat in with his people and Thor so long ago. It is the main concourse for gathering of the palace and they seem to have just come from feasting greatly.

Thor had stayed in the fields harvesting and humming to himself, waiting for them to finish.

Loki watches Thor take up a plate of meats and vegetables and another entirely saved for stacking high with fruit. He takes a seat in the far corner and the last of the people leave the room, casting Thor long wondering looks. Thor is left alone.

The sight of Thor picking at scraps sits ill within Loki and so he leaves. He heads to his inn, feeling sick and angry with how far they had both fallen.

\--

Thor is eating alone when Balder finds him.

“Thor, we’re going to be harvesting the next week. I saw you head out to the fields earlier today.”

Thor knows what he’s asking of him. He nods, “Yes, I harvested my share.”

“Thank you.” Balder inclines his head and gives him a crooked smile. He has choppy brown hair that sways before his eyes and he swipes them back with a pass of his hand.

“How are you finding Asgard?”

Thor shrugs but he already knows the answer will be true before he says it quietly. “It is a charming place. Full of life Jotunheim did not have. Your realm is very…lush.”

Balder’s smile widens and Thor eats more of his meal. It is a flat meat with many spices that are almost too much for his throat, but he washes it all down with their wine. It’s smooth and sour and rinses the sting away. He stabs at the slices of red that sit on a golden plate.

“These beets you grow, they’re quite good.”

“Tomorrow we’ll have potatoes and carrots. Jotunheim really doesn’t have any plant life?”

Thor raises his head and swallows down the thick meat of the beet. He wonders at Balder’s endless curiosity. It’s almost crass to ponder things so openly, but he indulges him.

He must play his part here.

“In the wastes there are ice-worms that crawl beneath only the thinnest of ice. Our beasts feast on them in the months you would call summer. We live on fish and what little the black of the sea can cough up onto the basalt of its shores.”

“Basalt shores?” Balder asks, surprised.

“We have a single river of fire that runs the length of the sea. It is very dangerous to go there. Those who live on the edge of the wastes have enough food to last them through long years but it’s a choice few make.”

“How do you know this?”

“I was sent to live there as a boy before I was raised alongside Loki.”

Thor swallows a gulp of wine too hard, his throat aching. He left off _my King_ and it sits sourly somewhere against the racket of his ribs. He wants to correct the mistake but Balder hardly seems to have noticed.

“We are a people who hunt. Those who can bore down far enough into the ice can fish for a few hours, but it’s a risk in itself. To fall would be to drift in the black and none crave such a fate.”

“What do you hunt there?”

Thor knows Balder cannot begin to grasp what drifting through the black means or how high the flames of the waste can reach, what it feels like watching someone realize they’ve lost their father or mother hunting for cattle. Balder’s innocence and wonder shine bright in his face like a child and Thor wants both to leave and to answer.

He answers.

“Have you never heard of Audhumla?”

“Yes, of course,” is the immediate reply.

“We have…cattle like yours; aurochs. They’re much larger. Our goats are large as well, but we do not have sheep. We make leather from the hide of bears and the aurochs, and dye it in the blood of waste-snakes. It takes many to take down an auroch, but only a few to collect the snakes. They must be brave.”

“Have you hunted any?” Balder notices Thor’s reaction as he looks away and quickly says, “No, no, that was rude of me. Pervasive. I apologize.”

“I was always too slow for the snakes, but I’ve felled an auroch, yes.”

“With _what_?” Balder bursts out, clearly amazed.

“A spear and an axe,” he says, pride lining his voice. He does not bother to hide it.

Balder let out a whoop of laughter and it echoed in the empty hall. It was late, after the others had eaten and taken to sleeping or taverns. Thor had seen a few pair, attempts at courting and some with children even, clinging to their mother’s skirts.

This realm was soft and homely and beautiful and it made Thor miss Loki more than he could bare at times.

He wanted to see Loki at the end of a hall and be free to go over and tug him close and kiss him and murmur soothing promises against his lips. Promises of roaming the endless fields to watch the snow fall. Promises to stand in the rain and feel it beat steady against bare skin. Promises of going to bed together and lying wrapped in fur and cradled in the warmth of the other’s skin with their names on each other’s breath.

The sadness must have shown on his face for Balder clears his throat, lowering his voice.

“You haven’t really left the palace grounds have you, aside from the fields?”

“No.” Thor honestly didn’t know if it was allowed.

“Have you seen the sparring grounds?”

Thor just stares at him, goblet forgotten where his fingers drop from the stem of it.

“You were a warrior, weren’t you?”

Thor nods.

“I think I know some others you’d enjoy meeting.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things will be swinging into gear soon.

Balder had insisted. So Thor had agreed, if only to appease the little brother he never knew, who is so earnestly trying to make peace with him. It’s humbling and endearing, and makes him more receptive to the kindness Frigga imparts on him in small gestures—the page boy who offers him dinner in his rooms, the unsaid allowance of farming with the others, the freedom to choose solitude or company, the freedom to miss Jotunheim.

Thor wants to please these people. He feels he wronged them in some way, growing up loving a realm that was not his own.

He feels unease swim through him but he tamps it down with the distraction of Balder’s hopeful smile.

They’re on the very edge of the training grounds, watching the sparring of warriors who beat each other bloody only to help the fallen back to their feet, or to the baths. Thor has never seen such friendly competition.

Not for the first time does he feel yearning for what could have been, waging war with what he still wants to be.

He feels as if some part of himself is betraying Loki. Betraying their people— _Loki’s_ people. He feels guilty for enjoying even the tiniest things belonging to this realm, such as the grass against his bare feet. Or the way the sky opens to both rain and soft light.

And yet.

And yet he wishes for the freedom of this realm to have been his since birth. He wonders what terrible error his birth-father had incurred to so let Jotunheim ruin the golden realm all those decades ago, no matter that it seems to be restored now. He wonders how it could have been like, growing up here, among the Asgardians and their hierarchy of Aesir. Wonders how it could have been, knowing himself as such since his first breath, uninterrupted by war and death and unrest.

Thor wonders what it would have been like had he and Loki’s lives been reversed, and Loki taken instead and raised on Asgard under a guise. He knows Loki would not have handled such a terrible lie well. For all the lies Loki weaves, he despises being fed them.

Thor thinks that having been taken from Loki is the one of the greatest lies Loki has been told. He knows his King loves him, in his way. He must. To be so snatched from him, to learn that Thor never truly was his to have, must sting.

It could not have been one sided. Not for all those long years. Not for the lengths Loki went to to ensure Thor remained ever by his side.

Balder begins walking them toward a small group of warriors. Thor feels heavy, leaden. His steps drag and his chest hurts. He doesn’t want to be here.

But he forces his legs to move because he hasn’t felt so terribly in a while and he wants to keep it that way, no matter he knows how the ache of missing Loki will never be gone from him. It seems as if new thoughts turn inside his mind with each breath he takes.

The sky is grey today, and the ground swept clear of snow. The grass peaks through on small hillocks all around the training area and many warriors have laid out quilts and furs to combat the cold as they rest between bouts.

“Ho, Balder! I haven’t seen you around here in a week, at least,” one man greets. He slaps a hand to Balder’s shoulder and Balder returns it. “You are bound to become fat at this rate.”

“Ha! And you have yet to trim your moustache; it’s curling away from you.”

The other leans close, smiles. “Ah, but the women love something to tug beneath the sheets.”

“Seeing as they cannot find your prick, they might as well,” calls the voice of another.

Thor is surprised to see it is a woman, clad in armor well worn and scarred. She has a mess of black hair tied from her face, and her bruised hands are busy with sheathing her blade. She walks to them, lips tilted in a soft curve. Her fingers tap at the baldric at her hip and she casts bright eyes up at them. Thor can see her appraising gaze slide over him. She doesn’t bother hiding it.

She is shameless, brazen, and Thor is drawn to her unwavering nerve. So rare is it, for a woman to fight. Asgard truly is a strange place.

Her hair reminds him of Loki and he wants to laugh for the humor the Norns seem to harbor.

The gaze remains too long and Thor can see the group’s remaining two—a large man with wild red hair and a beard to shame his belly, and a grim man, short, with hair tied back in a neat bun—sheathe their blades and come to stand behind the woman.

“And who is this? A new lad come to train?” Thor eyes the red-headed man, sour words on his tongue ready to correct him.

But Balder takes the chance from him.

“This is Thor.” Their mouths drop open, except for the grim man, and Thor feels the pressure journey from his chest to his shoulders. “He’s fought long years on a realm much harsher than ours, so I thought it able to benefit us all to trade a few swings.”

“Aye,” says the blond, arm dropping from Balder’s shoulders. He sounds in awe and Thor cannot think why.

But then he remembers he is their lost prince and so he bows his head and tries to smile, however weak it feels.

The sky breaks along the horizon, dark with the beginnings of storm.

Thor is the only one who notices.

Sif holds out her hand and Thor knows it is a gesture of welcome here. Of equality.

He rarely received so much from his fellow kingsguard.

Thor reaches out and accepts her clasp of hands. Her grip is sure and so he returns it steadily.

“I would see what our returned heir can do,” she states, smile playing at her mouth.

“Sif, you speak too plainly!” the blond chides her. But she swats his hand away as it frets at her shoulder.

“All is fair here, Fandral, so long as the training ring is not disturbed. Let us spar.”

Thor sees Fandral step away with a slight incline of his head. Thor’s lips part, he realizes he’s just been bowed to. Showed inferiority.

And he realizes he does not like it.

He moves to quickly correct it. “The lady is right, we are equals here, no matter where we come from, yes?”

Sif’s smile is wide but the others still are silent and show obeisance.

Thor goes to Fandral and claps a hand to his shoulder, squeezing to bring him to standing. Fandral is pale and staring at him with wide eyes.

“I am as much a stranger to your realm as I am a stranger to you all. It is only fair I prove myself. Trust is earned only on equal ground, is it not? I dare not ask any of you for more than what is owed to me.”

A slow smile breaks out across Fandral’s face, and he blinks at Thor.

“Well said!” the redhead calls, hands on his belly and a laugh flying from his lips.

\--

Thor learns shortly that the large-bellied man is named Volstagg, and the somber one is Hogun. He barely speaks and he keeps his eyes on the fighting, and altogether seems content in ignoring Thor’s presence. He picks at a blade’s tip, sword laid flat out over his folded thighs. Hogun is caring for his weapon absently as Sif and Fandral pair off. Volstagg is standing, watching the proceedings around him. He is speaking with Balder quietly and they punctuate their converse with quiet bursts of soft laughter.

There are some from other rings who have diverged from their partners, coming to hover. They stare at Thor where he sits and Thor feels more eyes on him than on Sif and Fandral readying their spar.

Sif conceded shortly after their greeting to first spar with Fandral. At Balder’s request. They listen to their Prince dutifully, joyfully. Unafraid. They see him as their friend, Thor can tell.

He recognizes it as a mirror to how he sees Loki. He is unafraid in Loki’s presence, bold, brash. He can be himself without fear of reproach or being sentenced to fend off waste-spirits seeking blood and skin to knock against whispy, salt-sheathed claw.

Then he remembers it is a fear no longer belonging to him at all, for he is no longer on Jotunheim. He has no need to fear the wastes and what they hold. He will never worry over the telling bow of an Auroch’s great horns as they prepare to charge, or of the tricky slip of a snake through his fingers as venom slips from its scales again. He will never need to brave the foggy night to glimpse a slice of a waning moon, dull and soggy with eons of night. He will never sneak about the massive ice columns with Loki, when everyone else is asleep, laughing and loving each other’s skin in the silent halls.

An immense sadness falls over him then, complimented by the numerous heavy stares focused his way, and suddenly it is too much. Thor shifts his gaze to the ground, a rare feeling of being overwhelmed coming over him, and it must show, for Hogun speaks.

“Balder says you can fight.”

“Aye,” Thor grunts.

“I would see for myself your merits.”

Thor meets Hogun’s eyes from across the minor distance they sit apart and he nods. Hogun blinks and then he is back to focusing on Sif and Fandral.

The weight is still there but it is less.

\--

Fandral fights with laughter. He smiles and sways and jabs and Thor at first is confused why such blatant cockiness succeeds in blocking Sif’s forward thrusts of steel. She is ferocious and feral where Fandral skips and dances back and Thor sees it is in his footwork. He evades more than he withstands and it’s effective.

But he succeeds only so much.

Sif surprises Thor by throwing her weight forward, and though she is shorter, Fandral moves away from her charge. But she feints the other way and elbows him hard in a kidney, dropping him to his knees. She’s hardly moved a foot.

She grins smugly and musses Fandral’s hair before helping him to his feet. He is laughing.

“I am the greatest swordsman this realm has ever seen and yet that is the third time you’ve managed to fell me in four days.”

“That is because I am the greatest _warrior_ this realm has ever seen, and that goes for any other too. Let us see which of us has the greater number of bruises by the week’s end.”

“That is fair, Lady,” Fandral concedes, rubbing at his sides.

He nods to Thor on his way to the grass, sitting with a relieved groan.

Sif wipes the haft of her blade on her hip, ridding it of the sweat from her palms and switches it between her hands as she bends to gather dirt to pat them dry. She shifts the handle between her fingers, rolling it, gripping it firm. Then she goes over to a rack and heaves a large round shield on her forearm, bearing the weight as she raises her arm high, adjusting its hold.

She hefts it once, twice, then settles into a stance Thor knows is for bracing weight. She expects him to charge her.

He grabs up a shield of his own, and makes the choice to go empted-handed. He feels some small sense of triumph as he sees her eyes widen barely.

“Not too smart of you, ice reiver.”

Fandral gasps from where he sits, continuing to be shocked by Sif’s behavior. Thor smiles, for it is refreshing to not be gazed upon as some rare bird, fragile and ill-tempered. He has already decided that he likes Sif, very much. He wants to see what she is capable of.

Thor takes careful steps forward, lifting the shield just to the edge of his sight. His free hand hovers in the air beside it, and he keeps his fingers loose.

She takes a risky step forward, quick, the metal boss of her shield shining where she thrusts it forward. Then she darts back, her blade cutting the air smoothly. Thor does not take her bait.

“Fine then. We will do this your way,” she says.

Sif tosses her blade to the edge of the grass, safe for the soft landing and far out of reach should they choose to wrestle each other to the ground. Neither wish to draw serious blood from the other.

Though, Thor thinks, Sif does have a determined look in her eye.

She raises her shield high as well and takes a lower crouch than Thor is able to hold. She moves towards him and Thor is curious if this is a tactic they are taught here. It seems out of place, moving alone and low to the ground.

He is reminded of a beetle just as Sif approaches and rams his shield with her own. His balance is tested but he holds fast, bracing his weight on the balls of his feet as Sif does not relent her onslaught. They’re pushing against each other now and his free arm is busy bracing with its twin.

Thor steadies himself, gathers a large breath and throws his weight into the wood at his arm, breaking Sif’s stance and forcing her to overbalance from her low crouch. She falls onto the dirt on her haunches and she looks utterly affronted.

Thor shrugs and holds out his hand.

Sif jerks the topmost edge of her shield into his waiting fingers and he grips it tight as she stands on her own. She doesn’t bother brushing the dirt from her clothes as she flicks the long tail of her hair over a shoulder, eyeing him. She grabs the shield back and nods, once.

He is about to concede the fight over but then her shoulders tense, she smiles, and her arms come up. Fandral hoots from the grass, as if he recognizes what she is about to do, and Thor could commend her for her persistence. He drops the shields some yards away and readies a stance all his own.

But then the sky breaks open and thunder booms, long and loud in the distance. The sky flashes once and then lightning cracks a moment later. Thor can smell the rain on the air, and he knows there is time to get to cover before they become soaked.

Sif relaxes and straightens to her full height. She gathers up her blade and shield and replaces the width of it on the rack. The blade, she sheathes. “Well played, Thor. Though I wonder you did not use a blade.”

“They are not mine to yet grasp.”

Fandral snorts from his spot on the grass but it’s shortly followed by a thump of Volstagg’s hand against his stomach. Then Fandral is gasping for air, laughing weakly. They’re slowly gathering themselves from where they sit, shaking out the quilts and furs and folding them under their arms.

Sif rolls her eyes at her friends. But when she turns her gaze back to Thor, it’s softer.

“Jotunheim robbed Asgard of its heir. I’m grateful they did not rob our heir of himself,” she tells him, squinting against the sky as the rain begins to fall. Then she is turning and joining Fandral and Volstagg in walking to the baths.

\--

They invite him along and Thor surprises them by saying yes. If they trust him enough to shed their armor alongside him then he feels he owes them the same respect. Balder is absolutely beaming as they walk together.

Thor wonders if they bathe together, men and women, and finds they do, to an extent.

It is the norm, Thor realizes, for the others to see Sif go nude along with the men as they bathe as warriors of Asgard do; jabbing and laughing with each other. It was a practice foreign to him on Jotunheim, for he was small and often bathed with Loki in his private chambers.

The baths here are housed in longhouses built with looming arches of wood and stone, with levers for summoning more water much like his own bath provided. There is enough room for everyone who fought that day to have space enough to see about their own business, and Thor is at least grateful for that. He agreed to this small thing, but he still feels outnumbered, out of place.

And it is not without reason.

“First a woman and now a Jotun sneak?”

“Bite your tongue you foul flea,” comes Fandral’s reply. The other sneers at him.

Thor sees it is a man, tall, broad in the chest. He has scars littered all along his torso and Thor knows he has seen war. He is older than they.

“I see no Jotun here,” Balder says.

“I am he who you speak of. Pay me the respect of actually speaking to me,” Thor tells the man.

He turns his withered glare to Thor and Thor meets it steadily.

“You are not Odin’s son, though you look enough like him. That nose and those eyes are surely his, though you look a child in pale skin. Are you not really some get of a Jotun ergi whore and Odin’s far-reached lust?”

The chamber is silent save for the sound of running water. All have taken notice of the disturbance and Thor can hear the others behind him murmuring. He can almost picture Balder holding an arm out to withhold Fandral.

“I never knew Odin. Though your Queen has been gracious enough to reveal a life to me I never knew was mine to have.”

“Frigga chases memories half ruined from fire and death. She is best off forgetting the grief dealt to her.”

“You speak of your Queen, you would do well to remember that.”

The man’s gaze falls on Sif and he frowns. “You are but a girl. You enjoy toying with knives when you should be tempting milk from goat teats. Keep out of the matters of men.”

“I should gather up a knife to cut your fat tongue from your throat. It is wagging far too much. And that is a matter of men entirely to my interest.”

For a startling moment the man starts forward and Sif braces herself, grabbing tight the stone basin she holds.

“Brant, enough,” says a man some feet away. He holds a cloth in front of him as he walks over, but Brant raises a hand to stop him.

“How should I know you are simply not one of their ergi sorcerers? Playing with the color of your skin to fool us into trusting you? How should I sleep knowing a Jotun sleeps under the same stars, waiting for the chance to rob our realm again?”

Thor takes a steadying breath and shuffles it out through his nose.

“I was abandoned by the people who I thought were my own. I have only Asgard now, and I would be a fool not to accept the gifts being offered to me. I seek no ill-will towards your people nor to your own person. I simply wish to earn a place here, so that I may go about my days in peace as you do.”

The words are true and Thor feels the rich twinge of sadness lace his words. He sees Brant’s eyes narrow at the sound.

“Respectable, but unlikely. Clever words from a shape shifting rogue. Jotunheim is full of them, it is said. I wouldn’t doubt the Queen has been taken under some grand folly to take to the likes of you.”

“Defiant little…” Fandral mumbles.

Thor casts his gaze around the room, looking into each of the faces staring back at him. Some look away as he meets their eyes.

“My name is Thor. I am as sure of that as I am sure of how it feels to fell an Auroch with only an axe blade the size of its eye. The way I am sure of how delicious the sour snap of an Asgardian apple is to the tongue, a delicacy I mourn that Jotunheim will likely never know. I know you are all wary of me. I am wary of you. We each must prove ourselves to the other; on this we understand each other, yes?”

Brant is silent for a long time. So long that some men make the decision for themselves and silently return to their bathing. Brant and Thor remain standing there in the center, considering what the other will do.

Then, finally, Brant jerks a nod in acquiescence. Thor nods and turns. He wants to be gone from this place. It was a bad idea.

“Though I would have thought you unlike us. Do not the Jotnar have cunts, or something of the like? You must breed, after all?” He huffs. “I have never seen the likes of a Jotun female, nor any of you I take it?”

There are murmurs of assent of the few remaining and Brant is pleased to be rallying his friends to his aid.

Thor turns on his heel and walks straight before Brant. He is furious, suddenly, and he is tired and he simply wants to leave but he cannot. He is here, on Asgard, facing the derision of a single, battle-hardened old brain who cannot even summon the respect he should have for their generous, kind, beautiful Queen. A woman who broke great lies to him, a woman who brought truth to him, however painful. A woman who is both his mother, and the one who robbed him of his right to serve Loki—his King, his lover, his brother—and he is so _angry_ then.

He grabs Brant’s throat and Brant goes tense, pride not allowing his smirk to waver. But they both know in that moment that Thor is the one possessing greater strength.

“I am Thor and Thor only. I could have a stalk of wheat hanging between my legs and my words would still hold true.”

He releases his hold of Brant’s throat and shoves him slightly back to settle the matter. He returns to their area and moves to gather the basin from Sif’s tense fingers. She’s utterly furious and he wonders when exactly he earned so much from these few.

She is looking up at him, searching his eyes for an answer to a question she will not voice. He shakes his head and she stares a moment after Brant’s standing, smug form. Then she huffs and turns away from them both, grabbing a thick bar of lye on her way past Fandral.

Fandral murmurs low and angrily to her and she nods and murmurs back.

Volstagg has long since retreated back to bathing and Hogun is a silent presence in the farthest corner, cloth draped over his hips as he enjoys the steam. His eyes still trail from Thor to Brant to the others back to bathing. He is an observer and Thor envies him for it.

He is ever in the center of things of late and it tires him.

“How many Jotun cunnys did you fill while you lived as one of them, huh? How many Jotun babes must I sniff out in the next war?”

Volstagg’s voice comes as a low, rushed, frustrated thing, “Will the fool not yield!”

Thor clenches his fists and goes on with his washing. He is shaking.

But then Brant squawks and there is a loud splash as a cascade of water washes over the tiles and a large wooden bowl clatters to the ground. It snaps from side to side before rolling and tipping to rest on its top and Brant is left standing there, soaked with boiling water. Steam rises from his skin and he’s red in the face.

There is laughter then, from many. And Thor finds he is joining in.

But as he lies in bed that night he wonders who tipped the water onto him in the first place. He did not turn to see in time.

The sky rages with storm all night long.

\--

The rain is still pouring when he wakes, and Thor’s spirits are dampened. He wanted to visit the fields. Around the second hour of his waking, snow joins the rain and he can gather from the conversation in the halls it is an odd thing. It’s not normal here. Then the thunder starts once more and the wind rages so violently, people run for cover where before they were braving the rain to pick the last of the harvest before the true snow fell to blanket the realm.

But Thor is confused. He feels ill. He feels full, _heavy_ and he finds himself not straying far from his bed most of the day.

He thinks it is the food of a realm he is not yet used to finally catching up with him, reacting badly in some terrible way. He feels like he cannot breathe. As if he air thickens with each loud blast of thunder and shuddering thread of light.

But then there is knocking at his door, just twice. Thor believes it is a page with more food and he wants to send him away, but cannot find the words.

His door opens and Frigga is there.

She is smiling softly, and he forces himself to sitting. He is embarrassed at being seen ill by such an impeccable goddess. The thought of her seeing him disheveled seems a slight to all she has had to endure.

But she goes to sit beside him on the bed and she shocks him by trailing soft fingers over his temple. She smoothes his hair back behind his ears, murmurs soothing things in a language he can’t quite discern. He spies her braiding his hair in small pieces, as time passes, but he feels better. He feels calmer.

He falls to sleep, for he can finally breathe, and he feels Frigga’s warmth all around him, pulling the covers around his shoulders, sweeping his hair from his neck to lie along his pillow. He feels at peace.

The storm passes and he gives in to dreams eased by the soft sound of her humming.

He dreams of nothing and it is a welcome gift.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa late update! I'm so sorry for the wait, but the last handful of months has been crazy. I just moved from California to Oregon, and work is calming down a bit. So updates should be quicker from now on. Thanks for sticking with this fic, you all are such lovely readers~ c:

Thor finally wakes when the sun is at its highest, feeling bone-tired. Exhausted to the point he can barely sit up. Frigga is not there this time to help heal him, with whatever weaving of seidr she applied the night before. He feels sick enough he can’t breathe.

Then a rush of breeze disturbs the airy fabrics draping the large balcony, and it’s like the breath has returned to him. He can breathe, and so he does, deeply and for some time.

Butternut hues paint the marble and gold and he lies there in bed, staring at his own pale flesh. He’s still not used to it. He thinks he had a dream in the night, feverish though he had been, where he glanced down and all around him he saw Loki. An endless sea of his sharp features, reflected in a hundred thousand other forms. All different and yet he knew them, each and every one.

Thor switches his gaze out to the balcony, watching the sky for some sign. A sign of anything.

He sees a hawk drifting on currents among the softly falling snow and counts it better than the storm that raged last night. A raven follows some ways behind.

He feels like he’s brought a plague with him to this quiet land.

\--

It is nearing dawn and Loki is picking at feathers, counting the bones and thinking on how best to morph his own to the shapes when the air changes. He catches the scent of copper and fibre and with an itch at the back of his throat, he turns and sees Frigga-Queen.

“You’ve been busy, boy,” she says. Her eyes are sharp, but he hears only curiosity in her voice. Not a threat, yet.

“Have I?”

Her smile is soft, fleeting. She takes a step and raises a hand in peace when Loki moves to stand. In defense, offense, he doesn’t know exactly what is needed just yet. But she approaches him and bends at the waist slightly, fingers hovering over the bonework he’s laid out.

“May I?” she mutters to him.

Loki jerks his head. He cannot manage anything kinder.

And why should he? His forehead aches with the sight of her, a cruel memory.

Her fingers dance light and careful over the bones. She pries one out of many and raises it to peer inside the small incision he’s made, studying the hollow length of it. She hums and he can see her lips twitch. She seems positively amused and he cannot fathom why.

She repeats this on several bones, but comments only a while later.

“We have few shape-shifters among our people. It is truly a magnificent talent.”

“I try,” he breathes out. “Why are you here? I thought I’d gone unnoticed.”

“No King walks a land unknown. Not even Odin could hide his identity, not always.” Her smile then is only for him and he feels his skin prickle all along the length of his arms and back. He feels like twitching.

“Odin is dead.”

“As is Laufey, child.” Loki frowns and she straightens to standing, finally. She’s staring down at him, and her unblinking pale eyes are eerie in the dim light of his rented room. “And you were the one to do it. So I suppose I owe you my gratitude, no matter you did not do it for anyone but yourself.”

She hands him the fine bone and he takes it gingerly. He doesn’t understand what she’s getting at.

“You’re a witch of Asgard. You could shift is you wanted to learn, but I know that is not why you’re here. You think I’m invading, or—”

“Peace, Loki, Sorrow-Born. You are here for Thor. I know it.”

Loki swallows. His mind is repeating _sorrow-born, sorrow-born, sorrow-born_ but it sputters at the mention of Thor. Rankles at how quickly he is derailed with just a mention of him.

“And why should I humor you? You, who had me rip my house from my skin?”

Frigga tuts and tilts her head. “You know Mimir is a clever creature. And you should find it in yourself to be honest for I know my son’s heart is still in Jotunheim.”

Loki has to turn away at that, swallowing so hard his throat aches for it.

Loki feels a hand light on his shoulder but he is too late to immediately shake her from him. He’s distracted, sick to his stomach with foul, roiling bile tugging its way up his throat. But the touch turns into nothing more. It is not unkind.

He realizes with a start she is not angry with him, and for some horrifying reason it makes his eyes prick wet. He blinks furiously, finally shutting his eyes. He digs the heels of his palms and almost desires to dash his eyes from the sockets.

“Your people treat him as the lowest sort of rubbish, _Queen_. You care so much for the son you reclaimed only to throw him to the hounds, it seems. Would if I only had a mother so caring as you.”

She sighs. It’s a quiet, sad sound. Loki hears the sorrow of a hundred years, empty and wasted on her breath.

“You know one must learn for themselves. Not everything in life can be handed over, gilded and polished.”

Loki can no longer stand it. His hands lower to fist against the table and he stands abruptly, nearly knocking the chair back in the process. Frigga stares at him, surprised but still with that sad twist to her mouth.

He cannot spot an ounce of a lie in the delicate lines around her lips, her eyes. And he searches her face for some time. Frigga allows him and it’s all the answer he needs, that she be so utterly patient with him. With the son of a traitor, a murderer, a king slayer, a thief of babes not old enough to coo the molds of words.

Loki thinks it is a fool’s merit that brought him here, to this realm. And all the fool be him, truly, that he ruined them so.

He bites his tongue hard enough to taste the sour tang of blood. He knows it is him alone that brought them to this place. His fault he lost Thor. His fault they’d fallen so far.

Loki must bite back the quaver in his lips before he speaks. His heart is racing the longer they stare at each other. The more he realizes with each second every detail in her features that is also Thor’s. It’s a hard thing to not fling himself from the room, just to be rid of the familiarity.

He wants to curse her. Scream and yell and shout every hatred he can think of so that she know, truly, what hurt has been dealt him.

“You are a schemer,” he whispers instead, tongue swirling through copper before sliding bitterly down his throat. “Worse even than I.” And he despises how weak he sounds. How thoroughly throttled by sentiment he really is.

Her eyes flit between his. “That was my husband. I only want my family whole, happy.”

A laugh forces its way from him, loud, short and bitter and too choked through with tears to read as anything but unbelieving.

“Aye, and you’ve seen to that doubly. How wonderful of you, to have ripped Thor from all he has ever known. How lovely to have a mother thrust him upon a land of enemies. All of them snakes lying in the grass to snap their teeth should he but blink. A gift, remarkable and unparalleled, this _family_ you’ve seen fit to give him.”

Frigga crosses her hands over each other. She is waiting patiently and it’s _infuriating_.

But Loki cannot stop and his voice is shaking and he is furious, ravenous at finally having his thoughts be made known. “I was his family. Only I who spoke to him, ate with him so that he had food to eat, let him _bathe_. Laufey would have killed him, or any other had I not taken an interest in him.”

“Oh, so it was you as but an infant who looked out for my son. Who fed him, made sure he did not fall prey to wandering beasts in the wastelands. You, who saw someone who had no one. A tool for you to shape, for you saw someone like yourself.”

Loki almost bites his tongue clean through. He opens his mouth but no sound comes out and he finds Frigga has sealed his speech from him. His hands are already glowing when she raises a hand. He waits.

“Please. I say this as nothing more than fact. I let you know the secrets pathways between realms for a purpose, King. There are things you do not know. Not yet. You will learn of them in time. I came here for two reasons. One, that I am grateful Thor has lived. That he has the heart and the curiosity to look upon Asgard and want to know more of it, not simply destroy it. I am grateful he has put his love in someone who suffers to be apart from him as much as he pains to be apart from you. I know his home is still on Jotunheim. That he misses you, too dearly for words.”

Loki’s heart thunders in his chest and he wonders when Thor told her this. It is so overwhelming that he cannot hate how transparent he is.

“But he knows now he has a home here. That it was always meant to be his home. To learn you are heir to a powerful kingdom after being raised as a slave turned guard would be hard for anyone to process. I can only help him so much without hindering him.”

Loki tries again for words, but nothing comes forth and he must stop himself from pacing in his frustration. Frigga watches him.

“Now, the second reason I have come here is for a request.”

Loki draws in a sharp breath and with it he finds he can speak once more.

“You assume much for knowing so little with certainty.”

She only smiles and he feels a shiver rake up his neck.

It is disconcerting, that knowing smile he has seen so much. She is not of the wyrd, she does not _know_ , has not seen them…has spoken even less to him. Yet she stares with such confidence, kind and unwavering that it makes his skin leap into gooseflesh the longer the moment drags.

“And what would be this request?” he all but spits.

Frigga’s smile shifts.

“That I be allowed to speak with your brother.”

Loki snorts. “And why should you have need of him?”

Frigga blinks and turns toward the room’s single window. She gazes out at the streets, dusted gold with the light of dawn. The snow is blinding to look upon.

“It is a private matter,” she says, and that will not do.

“I am King of Jotunheim by blood-right and battle-oath. There is no such thing as private when it involves council held without a realm’s ruler.”

Frigga hums and Loki would dare to say she is laughing.

“I have a third request, now that I think on it. One you will rather like, I think.”

Loki frowns. “You ask for many things.”

“Why do you hide yourself from my son? Are you so fearful that he will not know you?”

Loki balks, and has to fight to keep the shock from his face when she turns to him.

“I was unaware until now I’d gone about noticed.”

Frigga does laugh then and Loki believes Asgard’s only Queen is both mad and entirely too honest at once.

“A sorcerer does not slink about unseen, Loki-King,” she says, smiling. She offers them up so effortlessly, he thinks.

The words pour from him almost too easily.

“I thought I would be hunted for returning. I was practicing so that I could hide myself…It seems a silly thing now.”

She crosses her arms. “Not so silly, really. Rather smart, knowing when one should know how to conceal themselves. Though I dare say you still have a ways to go.”

Loki can only shake his head. He leans back against the wall and peers at her. He feels tired for so many reasons and to be found while trying desperately to remain hidden is disappointing to say the least.

“Why come here? You knew I would question your desire to speak with Byleister. He is as good as any soft-brained brute can be, so what use is he to the Queen of Asgard?”

“As I said, there are things you need not know just yet.”

Cryptic wench, he thinks bitterly. He closes his eyes and gives in to the craving to sink to the floor. He sits and breathes and waits for her to leave, even knowing she would not.

“You look a wretched thing,” she murmurs and Loki must open his eyes to meet hers for she sounds not mocking but _concerned_ and it baffles him.

He tries for words twice before his mouth is wet enough to get the words out. “What was your third request?”

Her smile flickers and she moves to kneeling, arms swept about her knees to keep the shining robes she wears from scuffing.

Loki feels like a boy just then, staring across at her. He might weep if he were not so exhausted.

“I would have you watch over him for me while I am in Jotunheim speaking with your brother. Hugin and Munin can only do so much when I am not present.”

His brow twists and she must sense his next question for she explains, “Had you not wondered how I knew your wanderings about Asgard?”

Loki thinks and it clicks and he feels utterly useless. “The ravens.”

Frigga’s laugh then is soft, a chime. Beautiful and easy to listen to.

The moment drags, the silence growing heavy.

“Will you do this for me?”

Loki eyes her, letting the silence stretch thin. “And do you scheme terrible things against Jotunheim?”

Frigga shakes her head slowly. “I would not want to destroy my son’s home.”

Her eyes shine in the muted golden light and Loki believes her.

\--

Balder finds him quickly and Thor must steady himself before meeting the boy’s gaze.

Balder notices the sheen to his skin, the way he balances against a large marble column and his eyebrows raise high.

“Are you well, Thor?” he asks, all sincerity and worry.

“Aye, well enough to be walking.” And it’s half true. He can barely catch his breath, and each step is a risk of dizziness. “I think it is something I ate, I must not be used to your diet just yet.”

Balder swallows, Thor can see the nervous bob of his throat. He has his arms poised, as if ready to catch him should he stumble or, forbid, fall to the ground.

“I would crush you flat, you ridiculous boy,” he huffs.

But he smiles and he finds he’s laughing before he can stop himself. Balder lights up instantly, overjoyed grin obvious and wide on his full face.

And he feels better. Thor is surprised at himself. Whatever roiling wave of illness was searching along his stomach has abated, if only slightly. He intends to make the most of the relief before it returns.

He nods at Balder who is eager to follow as he straightens to standing. “What have you planned for today, then?”

Balder purses his lips and goes slightly red in the face. “What makes you think I have something planned?”

Thor just stares at him. For all he slept like a stormy sea he finds he cannot help but smile today. “You are an eager thing.”

Balder’s grin wavers and he huffs, looking at the ground before staring out at the fields, freshly harvested and covered in patches of bright, new snow.

“I always knew I had a brother, somewhere. I always wondered what you’d be doing on any given day. If you were happy and healthy or ever hurt. If you had friends, if you even knew you had a family here. I mean, can you blame me?” He shrugs and Thor feels a fresh wave of guilt come over him.

His smile fades, deciding that he has gone on long enough with sulking and berating the unwitting for a wrong not theirs. Balder has never done anything against him and he has been a trite, witless fool for burdening the boy with such grievances so ill deserved.

“I am sorry, Balder,” he says quietly. Balder looks up at him, eyes wide. “This—it is all...quite difficult for me. That I’ve arrived here such a sad, angry creature is not your burden to bear.”

I have only ever had Loki to call brother, he almost says, but the words do not come.

Balder’s face goes slack, expression softening. Hesitantly, he raises a hand and puts it to Thor’s shoulder. When Thor allows it he gives a single squeeze and Thor nods.

Thor lifts his other arm and places his hand on Balder’s head, patting once before ruffling his hair. Balder gapes and the laughter that follows is joyous, lyrical.

When he calms enough for speech, his gaze grows serious. “It takes time, like all things do. I’m content with waiting and helping when needed.” He smiles and Thor thinks he’s a pleasant person to be around, if a little overbearing.

“Now, for what I had laid out for today…”

Thor chuckles. “I knew it.”

Balder beams at him, quickly explaining his intentions for the day.

\--

Fandral, Volstagg, Hogun and Sif are already fully dressed in their hunting throes, armor and bows, quivers slung across backs and knives strapped to all manner of limb. Thor feels nearly nude beside them, dressed only in a simple tunic and trousers, tucked into the well-sewn calves of leather boots.

Sif arches an eyebrow and eyes Balder when she sees them. “Did you not let him piss, either?”

Fandral slaps his hands together. “Sif, really, you are a crass creature! You’re speaking to our—”

“Please don’t,” Thor says before he can be reminded of his new title.

“We came straight here after I told him,” Balder says to the group at large.

Volstagg eyes Thor with obvious worry. “Oh, it will do not good. You’ll need boots to weather the snow, leathers and shawls to keep from soaking through and oh, the food you’ll need to pack, you’ll need a bow _at least_ and—”

“Calm down, Volstagg. He just needs to go get changed is all,” Sif tells him. She pokes a finger at his belly and he smiles at her. When she turns back to Thor, she’s all method and tactic. “You will need a bow, though. At least a full quiver of arrows, steel-tipped mind you, and—”

Thor shrugs, trying to think of where he can find these things in his closet full of silks and cottons and soft leathers. “I actually have none of those things.”

Hogun surprises Thor by speaking. “No armor, no weapon?”

“The armor on Jotunheim would not serve the purpose it would here, with how you’re all dressed. And I’m afraid the only weapon I had on me when I first arrived was an axe. It was taken back to Jotunheim in the possession of another.”

Fandral laughs, amused. “Why ever would you give your weapon to another?”

Thor frowns. “It was under the pretense it would be in safe keeping while we ventured here. I was wrong.”

A hawk cries loudly in the sky, carried sharp along the soft breeze.

Fandral wisely closes his mouth and looks to Sif for guidance. She huffs and gestures towards the palace.

“Nothing else to do but borrow from the armory. I’m sure they won’t mind two heirs packing a few things for a small journey.”

Thor is not so certain. But Balder nods and the confident tilt of his shoulders tells Thor it won’t be an issue, truly.

“Where are we headed?” he asks instead, curious.

Sif grins. “Alfheim. We’re hunting Elven elk.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long overdue, but I've been busy with work. I just started a web comic too that you can read [here](http://theoldwayscomic.com/) every Tuesday. I have an [art blog](http://boltplumart.tumblr.com/) as well.
> 
> I haven't abandoned this fic, don't worry! Let me know what you think~

There are few things to be said for his state of mood. Thor is in higher spirits than he has been in months and if it were not for the circumstances of his arrival here he would be truly happy indeed.

He has missed adventuring, missed the rush of wind against his skin, the breaking of bone beneath the strength of his own arms. Missed the piercing squelch of blood as it sprays across his face.

He knows it is highly unlikely they will find such danger—or sport—in what hunting Alfheim has to offer. He has heard lofty tales of the vivid elven realm. That they live in towers spun from cloud light, that they walk amongst stars for pleasure and feast on yokes from golden geese that are plump and happy.

Thor doubts much danger can lurk in the bowels of such a legendarily extravagant realm.

But those are just stories, he knows. Thor knows better than to take a story for absolute truth now, has learned too much in his short stay in Asgard just how hard unlearning a truth can be. For such beautiful, effortless tales can unwind even the strongest hearts.

He does not wish to be so unwound again, so soon.

\--

Balder watches quietly beside him while he heads into the armory. The one and same he wandered into before with Loki by his side, where he found the axe that so many chose to overlook due to its size and heft.

He stares at the hooks that held it up and Balder notices.

“Can you not find a suitable weapon?” he asks timidly.

Thor blinks and turns around. He eyes a rack of spears across from where he stands, a row of bows and sheathes of arrows beside it. The steps he takes are quick and easy, he grabs up a small supply of all he should need, turning at last to await Balder to show him to the armor.

Balder nods, though the motion is slow. Thor knows he is still concerned on some level about his wellbeing but trusts the boy will not bring it up again. Let him believe he still feels ill, as he did only an hour or so past.

“Come on,” Thor mutters. “Let us go find a proper shield.”

Balder presses his palms together, his smile small and patient.

\--

They’re passing out over the threshold of the armory and Thor is still thinking of the axe he left in Loki’s safe keeping when he stumbles. It feels as if he’s run into something the height of his shoulder, an invisible weight pressing into him to keep him from going forward.

There is a rush of cold air and Thor’s heart races.

It is a hopeless thing, an insanity borne of missing the ice he _knows_ , and yet.

Sweat gathers on his palms as he stands there, Balder staring at him in question.

“I must—” Thor begins, suddenly breathless.

He blinks and there is a page boy before him. The same youth from before. He comes to a stop before them, face flushed and hair matted to his forehead. He looks to have run some distance to reach them.

He’s panting as he tries to gather his breath all while trying to maintain a semblance of composure. He knows he stands before his lords. Thor hates the boy’s anxiousness.

“Be calm, breathe,” he tells the boy.

Balder touches a hand to the page’s shoulder. “You carry a letter with much haste. Is everything alright…?”

Thor notices the hint of worry in his voice.

The boy gasps in a breath and cannot answer though he does try. He simply shakes his head yes before handing the letter he holds out for Thor to take.

Thor wonders if it is a summons. He suspects it is more likely a warning, telling him that no, he cannot leave the realm after all. How silly he must be for thinking so.

But when he breaks the seal and unfolds the parchment, it is Frigga’s handwriting there to greet him. His fingers twitch in surprise at what he reads on the page. Balder waits for when he is clearly done before gingerly taking the letter to read for himself.

He sighs his relief at what he reads, for Frigga is indeed safe. All is well. But Thor knows the longer he reads the sooner he will realize. Balder hums then shakes his head.

He reads aloud, “Thor, I must be away for some time to attend to some business off realm. My return is unknown, though no danger should find me while I am away. Should you have any need of all of Asgard, large or small, merely say the word. I am confident you will find what you seek lies closer at hand than once perceived.

I also encourage you to visit our Vault. You may breathe easier once there.

Enjoy your travels. Stay safe,

Frigga.”

It is signed in an elegant script, the ink mottling the very edge as if she’d stained her thumb before folding the parchment closed.

“Hm, I wonder where she has gone off to. She does not often leave the realm, and even rarer is it she stays for so long...” Balder lowers his eyes. “It is quite odd.”

“Has she done this before?” Thor asks, though his chest is cold. He feels as if a lump has formed in his throat.

Business away from Asgard, outside of the realm.

Thor is not daft. What business save Jotunheim and its grand scheming could call away the Queen of the golden realm? And at such a time as this.

Thor shakes his head, hefts his spear closer to his side. He can feel each arrow knock around against each other in the quiver slung across his shoulder. He shifts his weight, feeling the stretch and yield of Asgardian mail move over his chest and arms. It is an odd feeling indeed. He fingers the dark tunic that sits cinched at his waist, tucked beneath a large belt of leather.

Balder shrugs. “It has been some time since she’s left Asgard altogether, but it is not the first. She will return soon, I am sure.”

Thor frowns.

“And what of the rest of the letter?” Balder asks.

“What?” Thor says.

“This last bit?” He points and Thor cannot say. He doesn’t know how walking amongst a collection of ancient weapons will help him.

“Let us be off to Alfheim. Whatever is in the Vault can wait until after we return.” He can feel the same pull from the morning lingering in his stomach. He feels sweat gather in the dip of his lower back. Thor tries for a smile but it feels forced and his teeth ache.

They send the boy off with two gold coins for his trouble, and then they head towards Sif and the others.

\--

Thor follows Balder, for he knows the way they will take to Alfheim. They spend a moment standing before the Bifrost site, the great glowing orb of metal a star in its own right.

Thor feels cold all over even underneath the heavy armor he wears.

Sif and Fandral are bickering over a hunting bet. Hogun stands off to the side and Balder converses with Volstagg about what meals will be made when they return.

They are discussing an awful lot, so much that they are still deciding when they step out from the light into a realm lush and wet with life.

Thor has never seen so much green.

Asgard has trees, and rivers, and gardens full of bursting flowers and crops. Even covered in snow, some plants keep on, pushing through white to reach what sun they can. And however lacking nature along the ground Asgard has its mountains towering in the distance. One day, Thor wishes to venture there, to climb them. He knows it will be a tremendous journey.

But to Alfheim, even after just three steps Thor can tell there is no compare. He is struck speechless by how vibrant the colors are. Flowers the size of a tree cast shade over their small hunting party. The trees reach up to the heavens and he cannot see the tops of them. There is simply a dark green blotch in the sky, like an endless cloud of leaves stretching on forever.

The shade is thick upon the ground, though everywhere he looks there are tiny spots of sunlight, seeping underneath. It is hot, humid, and there is a fine mist seeping through his mail. He tugs at the neck of his tunic again and breathes out slowly.

Fandral is beaming at him. “Never had much green on Jotunheim, did you?”

Sif punches him on the arm and Fandral scowls at her.

Thor shakes his head. He doesn’t mind the comment. “It’s true. I thought Asgard had the strangest landscape, I still am getting used to knowing snow after so much sun. But this…there is no compare. It is stunning.”

Fandral laughs joyfully, startling birds some yards away to take to the sky.

“Just wait till you see the women!” He turns and waves his arms. “Oh, Elven girls how I have missed them. Oh, and the food—”

Volstagg bellows a sound deep from his gut. “Oh, the feasting to be had here. Though their portions leave one wanting…you see,” he says, leaning close to Thor. “Elves are small folk and their portions are rather…tiny. Though they never seem to run out of courses. Oh, Balder that reminds me!”

And here he turns away, back to debating dishes to be had when they return. Balder laughs and suggests three more.

Thor wonders how they will garner so much off one hunt.

“Just how large are these elk?” he finally asks. They head on, trekking through the wilderness to some point he is unaware of.

Sif is the first to answer. She turns back to him with a cunning smile. It reminds him so much of Loki he nearly stops walking.

“You’ll be surprised I think.”

“Once rode on the antlers!” Fandral calls back.

Thor thinks of Jotunheim’s large cattle. The Aurochs that could—and often did—gut warriors three times his size.

He doubts very much the size of these _elk_.

\--

“That hawk is getting rather annoying,” Fandral mutters.

Volstagg nods his agreement. “Think you can shoot it down Hogun? I can cook us up a quick lunch.”

Hogun eyes the bird circling high above them. Thor cannot summon the energy to lift his gaze so high. He fears he will suffer vertigo and at worse, loose his stomach for all to see. He does not wish to mar the plants, even less does he wish to ruin their trip.

But the illness has returned to him. It feels as if each step he takes away from Asgard is a step closer to returning there in shambles.

Hogun, keen as ever, notices. Thor knows he does for he keeps casting him curious glances. He is the most observant creature he’s ever met.

But Hogun for some reason unknown to Thor, is either reluctant to point it out to the others or does not want to ask directly.

He answers Fandral and Volstagg without looking away from Thor.

“Too high for a bow and arrow.”

Fandral glares at the sky and throws a rock halfheartedly. It lands somewhere in a bush. Volstagg gives a watery sigh himself and Thor wonders for a moment if he is crying.

As if in petulant answer, the hawk gives a loud cry as it continues to circle them.

But Thor cannot focus on the bird. Cannot focus on much of anything. His throat is dry and though he tries to conceal his breathing, he stills pants harshly.

Hogun wordlessly hands a flask to him, bumping him gently on the shoulder. Thor takes it gladly, the water an icy reprieve down his burning throat.

“Breathe slow,” Hogun says quietly. The others do not hear them talking and he is glad for it.

Thor nods his thanks and obeys. “It is the heat I think.”

Hogun says nothing. Thor keeps breathing and soon enough he can drink without rushing. There is still the same roiling tug in his gut but he does feel slightly better.

Soon enough they are walking again.

\--

Thor is not sure what he expected.

He has never seen an elk. And from what Volstagg said of the elves being small, he expected the game to be similar in that matter.

But he was wrong.

They are gazing out at a long stretch of plains. There are trees here and there and a river through the middle of it. It is a watering hole of sorts and Thor suspects the surrounding forest life must come here to graze and water themselves alike.

But the elk are large.

“How many do we fell this day, hm?” Fandral chirps beside him. Volstagg rumbles an answer of two, and Thor understands now. Balder and Volstagg have not even reached half their planning.

“And you only wanted bows?” he asks Sif.

She barks a laugh at him. “The game, Thor, is to hit them in the eye. A small, quick target for a quick kill.”

“Grand sport in these parts,” Fandral tells him.

The tusks of an Auroch are smaller than the elk’s antlers. He smiles. A grand sport, truly.

“Let us begin then!” Thor says. A giddiness floods him and he thinks this hunt will be very fun indeed.

They each slide one by one down the slope they stand on, coming to rest at a larger hill. They can shoot comfortably from here, however the elk are far away. He wonders what sport is to be had in long range shooting.

Volstagg looks around at them all. “Who is to be runner today? I am not doing it again.”

Fandral looks to Hogun but Hogun is pointedly looking at Sif.

Sif rolls her eyes and then claps Thor on the back. “Go on then, Reaver.”

“What?”

“Run,” she says simply.

\--

Thor is no taller than the knobbled knee of the nearest elk. He wanders close to its hindquarters, keeping out of sight of the others. If they should turn and spot him, they will hopefully view him as some curious little animal, and not something meant to rally them to a chase for the others to shoot at.

The game is to run, cause a panic so that the beasts will move closer to where Sif, Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg wait with bows and arrows knocked.

Thor is glad he decided to bring a shield. He does not want to think of what would happen if he was caught by one of the looming antlers.

What now, he thinks to himself.

He readies the bow he carries, sans arrow. He simply grabs it up, pointing outward. Far ahead he can see the hawk circling.

“Let us see a hunt, you hulking creature,” he says. He uses the bow tip to prod at the ankle of the thing.

It lifts its great hoof and shakes its leg as if fighting an itch and shifts its weight before settling again, taking in large gulps of water.

Shaking his head, Thor prods more forcefully. He hears the echo of a laugh carried on the wind.

He sets his teeth, determined. The elk is ignorant to any danger and he hopes he will not have to round to the front to simply poke the thing in the eye where it stands.

“Come on.”

Again, the beast does not notice him. It lets out a faint sound, chittering from its gut in annoyance. It shifts a step to the side and keeps drinking.

Thor takes out an arrow and hefts it in his fist. He takes a breath, feeling sweat slide down his brow and drives it into the thick flesh of the beast.

There is a loud piercing wail from the elk as it lifts its great head to bleat at the sky. It cuts off abruptly as it swivels a long neck around to spy whoever hurt it.

Thor swallows and quickly grabs for the shield.

The elk stares at him, flares its nostrils and bleats once when it sees Thor raising his arm. When the shield is brought around the elk bellows loudly, bleating continuously at the others in its herd to flee from danger, tiny though it may be.

It is exactly what Thor wanted to do.

He runs and roars loud as he can, waving the shield to aim the beasts towards the others. Soon enough there are arrows flying and he must watch his step.

He slows, blinking to rid his eyes of sweat, confused for a moment why running so little would make him feel so out of breath. He’d been feeling fine. But now the tugging is stronger, making him bend over with a hand clutching his stomach. Thor’s mouth floods with saliva and then he is heaving bile, staining the ground a glistening sickly yellow.

The earth shakes beneath his feet and he stumbles, struggling. There is a great hollering from who he suspects is Sif as another thud follows shortly after.

His vision swims and for a long moment, as he fights to stand, he sees double.

“Wrong, this is not…the sky, I— _ah_!” He grips his head with a hand, shield brought up. It feels like someone is prodding his brain with a pickaxe.

There is a great thunder of hooves behind him. The elk have circled around once more, driven forward first by Thor and now driven back around by falling arrows. Two of their herd have died and now they are angry, their great heads low to the ground.

Thor hears bleating, and over that a great cry of a hawk. He is knocked away, the air a cold burst against his side, flinging him back. Then there is a violent knock of bone against wood against the shield he still raises as he grips his head. There is a vicious roar and Thor feels wet heat coat his face. He cannot move his arm.

Too many voices are calling his name but he passes out before he can discern who it is.

Above him, a face swims in his vision. A cool hand touches his face. And something in him unravels, easy and natural. Tears leak from his eyes as the person cradles him and he knows he _knows_.

He passes out.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rises from the grave to deliver a new chapter after over a year. So bad relationships are cool and take up a lot of your time. Don't do it, would not recommend.
> 
> I'll finish this beast eventually.
> 
> I recently entered into the Reylo Big Bang so you'll probably see some more Star Wars fic pretty soon!

He dreams. The dark swathes a bleating beast, snout quivering with hot air, teeth gnashing against frothy foam. He dreams he is pierced, again and again. His screams are smothered by the wings of a hawk, but when he tries to open his eyes, he can’t see the bird’s features. It’s beak is distorted, its eyes smudged black against gold. Too regal a thing for such ugly sport as hunting.

He feels hands tighten about his face, and just like that the dream is gone.

“He’ll lose it,” a woman says. She sounds far away.

“No he won’t. He’s a lord of the Aesir. He’ll heal.”

“Better gods have fallen to less.”

“He _won’t_ ,” the voice says and this time there is heat in the air.

“Odin’s son is—“

“He has a name.”

She sighs. The heat flares and then there’s the biting sound of a slap.

“You broke him. He was doing better. He was _smiling_ —”

“Leave, else you wish my wrath upon you, _girl_.”

He feels fingers on his arm, soft and warm. The touch is filled with care, but Thor knows it isn’t Frigga.

“You’re a weathered creature, Loki. You’re sad and petty and ignorant of the hearts of others. Namely, that lovesick fool you claim to hold so dearly.”

Loki is silent, and Thor feels the heat pulsate about the room. Loki is angry and barely keeping himself reigned in.

But then there is a shift in the air and it’s cold once more. Loki’s voice is calm and aimed down at Thor, so close he can feel breath fan his cheek.

“How often you must think on this fool, to know so much of what he wants.”

“You forgot him to another realm. So what of you?”

“You led him to harm, and that is proof enough you have no clue how to treat your King!”

There is the faint sound of footsteps retreating, a small laugh. “You hurt him most of all.”

Thor tries to turn his head when he hears a distant door creak shut. But he feels that muggy fog in his limbs and suddenly his chest hurts. A whine leaves his throat and at first he doesn’t realize he’s the one that made the sound.

He opens his eyes and he sees Loki’s hairline drift over him. Then his eyes, wide and _green_. Loki’s skin is pale again, his Aesir disguise. He tries, he _tries_ to raise up a hand to touch. But it doesn’t work. There’s a pain, deep and burning lancing from where his shoulder joins to the rest of him and he remembers the elk.

The effort of trying to raise his head has him breaking into a sweat. Heat blooms across his face and he feels his chest seize for his trouble. Then Loki is cradling his skull, soothing him with small, quiet sounds.

“I’m not a babe…” Thor mutters.

Loki smiles against his temple. “No, I suppose not.”

Thor only has strength enough to flex his fingers, and then Loki’s hand is there. He feels his own hand squeezed, Loki’s brows drawn close together against his cheek as he lowers his head. There’s hair tickling along Thor’s nose, but he doesn’t care. Loki smells wonderful.

He’s missed that smell.

It left the sheets so long ago. How long has it even been? Since the fall of everything he knew? Since he last felt at peace.

Since he last had somewhere to call _home_ , and mean it.

He thinks maybe the last was in a dream among so many. They blur together these days. Like the fall of snow on golden floors. Everything just looks the same after a while.

He’s tired of dreaming.

It’s quiet for so long, Thor can tell Loki is nearly dozing. He can hear Loki’s heart beat from where he lies, and his grip on Thor’s fingers has relaxed somewhat.

“Loki.” It comes out a whisper.

Loki’s breathing hitches just enough that Thor knows he’s listening.

“Why now?”

Loki’s thumb brushes his cheek, just short of his mouth. There’s hesitance in his touch and Thor despises it.

“I don’t honestly know,” he says. “I’ve been so tired.”

Thor tilts his head, turning to face Loki. Loki, whose vibrant green eyes are teary and red-rimmed. Loki, whose hand is shaking against Thor’s wrist. Loki, who left him to Asgard and her mercy, and a land he never knew belonged to him.

Loki’s eyes are pleading, and when he leans close, his lips are softer than Thor remembers.

Thor’s breath shakes, he’s missed him so terribly.

But then he remembers the blur of the snow, and the swirl of endless gold. He remembers that hawk high in the sky, watching but never wavering. He remembers Brant being burned in the baths.

His chest goes tight with the memory of watching Loki leaving in a tight coil of seidr.

Loki pulls away, holding Thor’s face to his, and he’s smiling. Grinning so wide Thor sees dimples, and wonders how he could have forgotten those.

He meets Loki’s eyes and feels the twist of storm stir in his heart and he takes a deep breath.

Loki flinches as the words leave his mouth. Hears some twisted, wounded sound lodge in his throat.

But he tells him again. And again, because now he can’t stop the words.

“Get out.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to finish this monster soon. Are you guys still liking it?

Thor is told it will take months. That he’s lucky it hasn’t rotted through, like so many others. That he’s graced by a king’s blood and that’s why he’s up and walking within three days of sending Loki away from his rooms. Three days, because he’s angry and tired of offering weak smiles to Asgardian healers who only mean to help him when he feels like breaking something instead. Eir was particularly upset with his decision to leave, but recognized his authority to do whatever he pleased.

Because he is _King_.

The power of it, the viscosity of it as he imagines how much he could _do_ with it, weighs as if it was a physical thing bearing down on his heart and makes bile rise in his throat.

He missed the clear air. It’s been sunnier out these last few days, and it feels good to bathe in the warmth of it. Nearly, he feels the urge to strip and stand in the gardens, but it is just that. Only nearly.

Thor wonders when he started wishing the snow away, wanting the sun instead.

Sif has tried to visit with him, but he has refused. Fandral has tried. Hogun and Volstagg know when to leave him be, and he thinks it is an admirable trait to have when knowing someone for so little time.

Loki has showed himself in the sky as his seemingly favored golden hawk. Harsh croaks and cooing calls drift down to him through the gentle winds.

When he is especially tired of being followed, he notices the winds do pick up. They carry Loki away in a blast of feathers and squabbling, and maybe that is one small victory he is owed.

“Beast,” Thor mutters to the sky, watching.

\--

He’s growing into a power of weather. He’s known it for some time, but it was a strange thing.

Growing up so poor and in such a desolate place, with nothing, and no one—especially the fact he lacked a control of the ice—does not leave the psyche so easily. Thor is used to sitting in quiet, bland lands and rooms, being quiet, and boasting little.

Asgard is loud, and brash, and even now as he sits in the palace gardens he can hear the boasting of warriors carried over the wind.

Only now half of him is drawn toward the ruckus. Part of him wishes to join, while the other wants only to draw away into his rooms and sleep.

The gardens are vibrant as ever, kept perfect and serene with a touch of Frigga’s seidr. Yet even they have lost some meaning to Thor in the state he’s in.

He stares at the aphids chewing dutifully on large green leaves and can only see a clash of swords as Asgardian soldiers spar. He takes in the large hollows of the flowers’ hearts and wonders what new move Sif is employing to put her enemies on their backs.

Thor does not wonder about Loki and what exactly he is doing at this very moment, like he’d thought on so often before.

He feels lighter.

It is an odd feeling.

\--

Thor is tired, his injury draining any energy he had left to further explore the strange lightness in his chest. He wanted to visit the Vault.

He’d felt drawn to it ever since he first woke after being hurt, though he cannot explain why.

Deciding to rest for the day and set out to explore the next morning, Thor heads to his rooms.

But Loki is there, waiting.

Before Thor can even open his mouth, he knows Loki has whispered clever runes to seal his voice in his throat. He’s experienced this spell before, knowing most times involved a risky tumble while cloaked somewhere close enough to the bustle of public to be heard.

The memories sting, for they are all happy ones. But he is too tired to argue, and his shoulder is aching terribly. And he has missed Loki. Oh, how he has.

When Thor is settled in a plush chair, Loki takes a deep breath and begins.

“It was Angrboda who hid you when Laufey first took you. Laufey had dark plans, twisted plans. Had Odin lived and I been born with anything but what I have—what I _could_ make myself have—Laufey intended to use us both. Marry us for peace and power. But Odin died and so he kept you yet. He should have killed you. I should have, long before we knew each other’s bodies.”

Thor’s heart is racing, painful and too heavy. There’s sweat starting at his brow, and he can feel a nervous twitch begin in his fingers.

“These are—there are things you must know, things you have to hear,” he says, eyes flicking fast between Thor’s. “Then I’ll go.”

Thor nods once, and Loki blinks.

“I don’t deserve you. I never have. I should have spared you the misery of knowing me,” Loki says, his voice rough. “I’ve cost you your home. I’ve estranged myself from you, and my home with it. I have no one and nothing and I _broke_ my birthright for it. For the truth of it all. I bring nothing but sorrow and desolation, and perhaps that’s my fate on the Ash.”

Loki’s eyes are wet and his image flickers. He’s having trouble holding his Aesir flesh and that’s not like Loki at all.

“You should kill me. Exact revenge for all I’ve done to you. Now, in a hundred years, in a hundred thousand, I want it to be you. I need that. I need you to do it.”

Thor is gripping his hands so tightly together he hears a knuckle pop, too loud in the tense quiet.

“I’ll accept nothing less,” Loki breathes.

Thor looks down at his hands.

“I let you go, because keeping you in a lie was unbearable to think of.”

Thor can hear the faint patter of rain starting just outside.

“I know that’s ripe, coming from me. I know, but it’s the truth. And I _hate_ that you make me speak it.”

Every drop is distinct, clear and precise, gentle along the stones and the dirt.

“I hate that you’re my brother, and that I miss your skin. I hate I have to reconcile my loneliness with following around after you like some poor, heartsick girl, clinging to the clouds and the air.”

Thor shuts his eyes, feels the rain grow strong.

“I will away to other lands, if that’s what you want. But I’m tired. I’m tired of ruling. I’m tired of waking without you there to watch you drool on the bedding. I’ll go. But I needed you to know why it is I returned. That it was a mistake to leave as I did.”

Thor opens his eyes once more to peer over at him. The rain has increased to a downpour, and Thor knows somewhere inside him that it is because of him.

Loki is trembling. And he’s looking anywhere but at Thor. When Loki lies he meets your eyes, smiles, knows he can have anyone believe him. When he wants to make you believe he might be nervous, he’ll even be a little flirty.

But he’s never seen Loki like this. He’s truly nervous, and vulnerable and pained. He’s rarely even seen Loki cry, let alone cry out declarations of affection and love. He knows Loki has never spoken like this to anyone, wouldn’t dare if it was anyone other than Thor sitting before him.

Thor knows Loki loves him. He’s known that for a very long time.

He asks with his eyes, and Loki lifts a fingers. Thor feels his voice return to him.

“Remember that day, when you cried out victory and stood over a corpse, a heart still warm in your palm?” he asks, and Loki blinks. He looks wary, but nods.

“Aye, of course.”

“I was enthralled by you. By the sight of blood dripping down your arm. You could have asked me to eat it, and I probably would have, you had me wound so tightly.”

“You still do,” he mutters softly. “Even now, all I want is to embrace you and smell your skin.”

Loki’s breath is shaky.

Thor stands.

“But if I do, I know it won’t be true. You’ll betray my trust one way or another again. You do it with everyone and everything. I suppose I should be surprised it wasn’t my turn sooner.”

Green eyes snap to his, and Loki’s face twists, his eyes wet. He brings ice to his palm in the form of a small blade, slices his palm quick. Blood seeps easily to the surface and when he squeezes his hand into a fist, blood spots the golden floor beneath them.

And then he does something that steals the breath from his chest. He staggers a step back, not quite believing.

Loki bends a knee, then two. He bows before Thor and never breaks away from looking at him. He stays there, letting the image sink into Thor’s mind, before finally bowing his head at the final moment offering blood smeared palms to him like he’s anything other than a broken heart.

A King has bent his head for a slave.

“I lost you that day,” he says, broken. “I lost my home, because _you_ are my home. I don’t care where you are or what you look like, as long as I am still beside you. Golden or silver hair, a slave or an Aesir lord, you have my heart. And may the Norns rip me to shreds and poison my flesh should I ever turn you away again.”

Thor sinks to his knees, hears Loki suck in a sharp breath when he palms his head. He bends down and breathes Loki in, feels hair tickle beneath his nose and lips. He kisses the back of an ear and Loki finally looks up, grips him with bloody hands.

Thor pulls Loki in close, feels the tension leave sharp shoulders, and his body go slack in his arms. Loki is shaking terribly, murmuring Thor’s name over and over again.

“Perhaps in another hundred thousand years or so,” Thor tells him.

And because Loki is Loki, he manages a laugh.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO I started art college majoring in animation and I'm approaching the end of my first quarter. It seems every time I update this fic major life changes are happening woops.
> 
> Let me know what you all think is going to happen! ;) There are some subtle clues throughout the chapter, which I've not done before. See if you can guess!

Thor dreams of battered and bleeding hearts tossed hand to hand, bouncing in a spray of red. When he swallows, it’s blood that coats his throat. His bones ache, his fingers clench, and in the sky is the birthing of a storm wild and grey. Rain soaks through to his skin and he wants every inch that the world promises him.

He wakes to Loki’s hands on his face. It’s so disorienting, he panics, and shoves Loki hard enough that Loki is forced to use seidr to stop himself from toppling over the edge of the bed. _Their_ bed. He squeezes his eyes shut, focuses on breathing. His injury aches with each beat of his heart.

Loki seems to sense his touch would not be welcomed at that very moment and instead straightens himself in a nearby chair. He’s quiet and staring at Thor like he could pick him apart and stitch him back together.

Thor winces every four seconds, and Loki notices.

“What is it?” he asks, nearly silent.

“Some terrible thing, a great whacking.”

He hears Loki hum faintly and he sounds so distant. Thor’s head is swimming, and his back aches as if he’s been struck again and again.

And then it stops as suddenly as it started.

He’s sweating by the end of it and Loki wordlessly gathers a cloth and pale of water to their bedside, gingerly wiping Thor down as if he’s bathing a newborn. He’s still apologetic, the meaning dripping from every soft pull and drag of his hands.

“I love you,” Thor whispers.

Loki places his chin atop Thor’s head and exhales slowly, waiting a long moment before continuing with his measured work.

\--

Thor is weary to linger in bed all day. The return of Loki has him in higher spirits but there is still the threat of those who would do him harm. There are still some who do not entirely approve of Thor even now.

But he’s hungry, and he wants to visit the Vault as he had planned, and so journeys from his golden room to make his way to the feasting hall, Loki in tow. He’s affected his guise of a fellow Aesir, and so is pale and lightly flushed in the cheeks.

His head is high and his shoulders set wide, proud to be beside Thor once more.

Thor is unsure whether to accept it for what it looks like or for what he can think it to be a thousand different ways.

Thor instead glances at Loki’s forehead.

“Does it ever hurt?”

“What?” Loki asks, noticing only after what Thor means. “Not at all. I’ve gotten used to the weight of my skull without them quite honestly.”

“That’s good,” he says.

Loki throws him an odd look and Thor catches it before he can turn forward once more.

He’s tired.

\--

The hall is bustling. Filled wall to wall with grinning faces and effervescent vibrance, the air nearly aflame with the mood of cheer. The tables are laid out with all manner of plate and ware, a glorious mess of wood and gold and drinking horn interspersed with all manner of leafy plant and berry. Vines drip over the edge of tables and benches to dance along the flooring, and yet no one trips. The attendants run about, seemingly half dressed, women’s hair half up and half down, the odd stomach bare, the luscious curve of someone’s rear end as they dance about another person, all precariously situated in this strange happy chaos.

“What is all this?” he asks.

“I’m not certain. It’s all a bit Vanir, isn’t it? I’ve never known Asgardians to parade about in the nude,” Loki says with a frown, yet still managing to watch every move same as Thor.

“I wouldn’t know,” Thor mutters, for it’s true and his head is beginning to hurt again.

He grimaces and suddenly he feels Loki’s fingers graze his palm where it’s clenched at his side.

Loki then points to Odin’s great golden seat, Hlidskjalf. Above it hangs a large wreath, and it’s so colorful Thor has trouble believing such plants truly exist.

“More Vanir…What is this I wonder?”

It happens quick and with a loud shout of victory. The far doors open and in marches Sif with Volstagg trailing behind her. She’s carrying something Thor can’t discern, but Volstagg is hauling a great log on his shoulders. The wood is splintered in huge jagged edges along both sides and then there is a sharp pain in Thor’s side.

Thor knows all at once what it was when he woke. He could sense a tree being cut down.

He’s not entirely sure how he knows, only that he does, and he’s entirely curious as to why all this is going on _now_.

Volstagg lets the hefty trunk fall to the floor before the throne, the bulky crash of the thing knocking goblets over. One woman catches her drinking horn before the ale goes splashing out of it. People are laying out fruit both at the foot of the log and on the tables now.

Sif and Volstagg are both red in the face, smiling and cold, their tunics spotted with light snowfall.

Sif raises one fist and the hall falls silent. She’s scanning the crowd, her grin faltering only enough to tell Thor she’s seen Loki.

But she keeps on, her gaze stalwart. She roars what they soon learn is the start of a chant, in some older language Thor doesn’t understand. But the others present start shouting it back in a steady, heart-heavy rhythm. It rocks the chest and leaves your ears ringing, and Thor wants so much to know what it is they’re saying.

Sif bends to strike at what Thor assumes is flint—and he can spy a hunk of charred wood in her opposite hand—for soon there is a spark of orange against the wood. She breathes something soft to the smoky embers and Loki huffs. Seidr.

The log catches flame and it’s soon engulfed, contained by runework to the log itself and nothing else. The half dressed attendants begin to approach it, whispering words and then throwing sprigs of holly to the flame.

“Shocking really, that she’d accept anything more than a brawny shield and sword.”

Thor nudges Loki in the side and he laughs. He’s in a good mood too, and Thor wonders how exactly they got here at all.

“She’s a clever fighter, Loki.”

“Aye. Not just anyone can summon flame, you know.”

It’s a rare compliment, and likely one never to be repeated so that Sif can be witness to it.

“Ash,” comes a voice from behind them. “The tree is a sacred thing, and we set out to honor it every year that we are gracious enough to receive.”

“Balder!” Thor watches Loki, wondering at what will happen.

Balder is wearing all grey with a silver fur about his shoulders. It’s beautiful drapery and Thor wonders at the beast that had to die for it.

“This is—”

“I know who you are,” Balder says, raising his hand. He holds it out for Loki and to Thor’s surprise it’s received with a brief, yet solid, clasp in return. “You’re Thor’s brother. The one I wish I could have been.”

It’s said so plainly. Loki smiles. “Perhaps not so terrible as I.”

Balder’s lips quirk into something strange, but he eventually nods.

“As Frigga is yet away from Asgard, I am acting ruler until Thor is ready to take the throne.” He notices Thor’s grim stare. “If ever the occasion arises, of course. As far as I am concerned, family of Thor’s is family of mine. You are welcome, Loki, King of Jotunheim. Please, stay as long as need be. Your home is mine.”

“I kindly thank you, prince.” Loki offers up a proper bow, low and respectful.

“And I thank you, for saving our brother,” he says softly. “Quickly now, they’ll be laying out the evergreen and the holly. You’ll want to watch for pranksters!”

With a final courteous nod, Balder leaves them, briskly walking to help with an array of berries about a set of bowls. The women are trying to keep him from doing their work, but he’s insistent, leaving a bundle of them blushing bright red as he charms his way from table to table.

“I don’t doubt that boy is an utter fool,” Loki tells him. He laughs. “I don’t think he quite knows to whom he speaks.”

“Aye,” Thor offers up, still curious about the decorations.

“It seems Asgard’s Yule is upon us, brother,” Loki says, and oh is his grin wicked.

Just above them holly blooms from seemingly out of nowhere, stark bobbles of green and red dancing about the high ceilings of the hall. A child’s laughter rings out bright in the hall and bounces off the walls, they come into view shortly. Two girls chasing a boy that has jam smeared across his cheek. One girl holds a spoon and it’s her the laughter bubbles from.

“I’ll have you drawn in bolts yet, Anvindr!” she shouts joyfully and it strikes somewhere low in Thor’s chest that once he was but a child running alongside Loki.

Loki’s fingers find his once more with a gentle squeeze.

\--

“Their celebration is so different from Jotunheim’s.”

“Aye, not nearly as many runts thrown to the salt wastes to mark the new year. Delightful.” Loki takes a snapping bite of a bright apple. “As are these lovely fruits. I’ve no idea how we went so long without these delicacies.”

They’re sitting at one of the long tables. Loki is playing with a sprig of holly in one hand while he slowly works his way through an apple.

“Because we had to,” Thor says simply. He takes the fruit from Loki and bites in for himself, savoring the sour taste. “Everything is different here. Softer. Lighter.”

“Even the beasts’ fur is softer,” he murmurs, and Thor isn’t exactly sure how he knows that. “The earth tastes different. The people are busier. And the air is warm, even with its poor excuse for snow. It lends to sleeping late into the day, which we should not make a habit of.”

“Planning to stay long?” Thor asks, and Loki doesn’t miss the bite in his tone.

Loki reclaims his apple and places it on the table, deliberate. “I won’t lose you again, as I told you.”

Thor nods, swallowing hard.

Just then Sif is there, standing just behind Loki like she’s debating on sitting down or demanding them both to stand.

“I trust you are doing well, Thor?”

_Liberties_ , Loki mouths across to him and Thor chuckles despite himself. He offers a smile to Sif, if for nothing else than she is a refreshing presence.

“I am. Sore, but alive, as I’d much prefer over anything else.”

“Please let me know if there’s anything you need of me, or the healers.”

Thor motions for her to sit, which she’s hard-pressed to refuse. She sits a good distance apart from Loki, angled towards him with a watchful eye.

“Hello to you, dear girl,” he drawls, grinning smugly.

She sets her jaw. “Likewise, _boy_.”

Loki barks a laugh that draws several looks that depart just as quickly.

“Is Loki safe here, Sif?”

She blinks, nods. “He is. And will continue to be if he keeps his head low. Word travels fast, secrets doubly so, even in Asgard. They know what wrongs have been done to their King.” The looks she sends Loki’s way is piercing.

“Balder has given him refuge.”

“That doesn’t always mean others have, as I’m sure you’re aware.” She sniffs. “Don’t be daft.”

“Oh I like her, Thor,” Loki says, looking excitedly at him. “All this _kingly_ business and I was worried I would be the only one left to heckle you.”

“Sif is my friend,” he tells him, ignoring the pointed look Sif sends his way at Loki’s words.

Thor still isn’t certain why Loki returned to him. And Sif is even less trusting of Loki, if she trusts him at all.

Fandral and Balder approach the table and while Fandral gives Thor a warm, slightly drunk embrace, Balder addresses Loki.

“Our resident holly hanger seems to be too tired to continue his good work. Would you mind lending us your prowess in seidr, Loki?” he asks, sincere.

Loki glances at Sif. She’s watching Balder, but nods.

Loki hands Thor what little remains of his apple. “I’ll hunt you down before the sun sets.”

“You should. You won’t want to miss your first true feast in this hall.”

Loki allows Sif a smile. “And here I was plotting an early night to bed.”

She laughs at that. “Oh, you won’t sleep for days if Volstagg has anything to say of it.”

Loki looks honestly perplexed as he’s nearly dragged away by a red faced Fandral and Balder, happily enthralled in talk of decorations.

“You know,” Thor mutters to her. “Loki was the one to spill that hot water on Brant in the baths.”

Her eyes light up. “How do you know?”

He shrugs. “I know him.”

She nods, leans on the table to turn and watch as Balder instructs Loki where to enchant holly to appear.

“Alright,” she tells him.

It sounds like she’s made a decision, or at the very least part of one. Thor believes it is a step.

He remembers then.

“Sif, would you be willing to aid me in one task?”

\--

The Vault is the same as he remembers it. Large and looming, and entirely too serene for what death surely lay inside. Odin and Laufey left a terrible legacy, but he already knew he would never make the mistakes they did.

He thinks of Loki gripping Laufey’s heart and feels something dark lance through him.

“Frigga suggested I visit here while she is away. I intended to go earlier but Loki was a surprise.”

“He seems a surprising thing.”

They’re both staring at the massive entrance. He wonders how many times Sif has been down here. Perhaps her aid in guiding him here was almost as new to her as it was to him.

“You dislike him.”

“He hurt you,” she says easily, like it’s the simplest thing.

Thor takes her hand in his, and he can see she’s mildly shocked by it, clearly unused to being approached in such a way.

“Knowing you has been one of the truest pleasures, my dear Lady Sif. May we always be comrades. May we always be friends.”

Her eyes shine by the end of it and she squeezes his hand. With a final jerky nod, she turns and leaves him alone with his task. He’s not sure what will happen, or why Frigga wanted him here but he knows it has to be something with the way he’s been feeling of late. The pain, the headaches, the terrible dreams.

Thor steps into the Vault, wondering.

It happens almost too fast to parcel out, but there is one thing before the rest.

He goes blind.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notice how I finally set the number of chapters there will be? I'm ready to have this monster be done. I'd like to move onto more fics!  
> Also a small update, I'm on winter break!

The Ash is tall, a poor description for it is taller than any other he has ever seen, stretching eons into the sky. The muscles in his neck strain to take in all that it is, all that it promises. It spirals into the heavens, branches twining out between dying stars, pressing against those only just borne unto the weave of life itself. Yggdrasil is a mighty behemoth of a thing, and oh, it is a true wonder to gaze upon the heft of all that life bears upon the backs of innumerable creatures.

The ground shakes, a steady thump beneath his feet. The endless gnawing of a creature at roots too thick to know.

Thor knows where he is and he trembles for it.

Grey flecks paint the heady fog that settles at the base of the Ash, soon spilling over to settle about the ground, covering his feet, the skin of his arms. There is the sulfuric burn of a distant fire in his nose; he can smell it.

As the ash falls in steady waves, he blinks and there, just before him, is his father.

“Oh,” he breathes, and what an utterly light thing to mutter upon meeting Odin, Allfather, Grímnir, Hangaguð, Ófnir, Forni, Gapþrosnir, and he knows not how he can call upon these names but he does, and it burns his throat for it, knowing each and every one has spelled a warriors death one way or another.

Odin is old but by no means frail. He is a withering beast of a god, unwavering, tempestuous, dire, dangerous. He stares at Thor as if he could call upon the ravens that pick at the ground about his iron-covered feet to peck at the tender flesh of his injured arm. He grips a mighty spear, golden and long, stamped steady into the soft earth beneath.

Thor feels like he’s dying, and so he kneels, tears springing unwanted to his eyes.

“Mjolnir is the greatest gift one can wield. Forged from the basis of the very universe, that the hammer should choose to remain as such is a gift in itself. Unknown power to heft about as one wants, easily abused by those clever enough to. Turbulent monster that it can be. Nature itself resides in the heart of it just as it does in you. You know this. You feel the earth even now, shaking your bones. You have felt the sky weep, wedged as a sorrow in your breast.”

Thor dares to raise his head, knowing sweat is beading slick at his brow. Odin is right.

Odin raises the spear and holds it still, and there is power in such poise.

“Temper your power. Carry your birthright and protect the realms for all days. This is your burden. Your gift. Reign with thunder and caution a kingdom, for Asgard is yours. Know this. Remember this. And keep him close, Thor, my son. Do what I could not.”

Odin’s words are a roar in his ears, and when the butt of that great spear strikes the earth, the ground gives way. And suddenly he is falling, tumbling into the maw of Nidhogg, dark, retching, wily thing that it is—

When he wakes, it’s with a violent start and he knows immediately he is in the care of the healers. He recognizes the yawning ceiling. He sits up and Loki is there, like he always is of late.

“I spoke with Odin.”

His words come out a whisper, but it does not matter, for Loki’s eyes go wide.

“A vision,” Loki says, turning to look behind him. Then Sif is there, staring hard into Thor’s eyes.

“I should have stayed with you,” she murmurs, clearly disappointed in herself.

Thor shakes his head, for how could she have known? How could anyone?

“A vision can mean many things. But they are not something I’m terribly privy to. Frigga would know.”

“She is yet in Jotunheim,” Loki says, frowning. “Doing what I’ve no idea.”

“We can call upon her,” Sif suggests.

“He called me son,” Thor hears himself say, and even he can tell he sounds fuddled.

Loki and Sif exchange looks and Sif presses a cold cloth to his forehead.

“Where is she…” his fingers grasp and squeeze for a handle he can feel the ghost of. He knows now what he needs to have by his side, why it is that he’s felt so terribly ill for so long, aside from the aching heart Loki left him to tend.

“Who?” Loki asks him, eyebrows drawing up in confusion.

Thor’s arms are screaming at him as he pushes to sitting, then slides one leg after the other off the cot. Plush furs are spilled about the golden floor and he knows he must have kicked them off in his thrashing.

They do nothing to stop him as he rises and starts slowly for the wide doors. Sif mutters something dark as she follows Loki out, dutifully following Thor to where they knew not.

It’s a winding path to the Vault and he stumbles more than once. But Loki is always there to help right him, and oh, how he had missed Loki. Thor wonders how he never went mad, living day in and day out in a realm not entirely his own, before he could ever let himself claim any piece of it.

He gains strength with every step closer, the pain in his limbs ebbing, the throbbing of his injury subsiding almost entirely when they come upon the entrance, still open in their haste to rush him to healing.

“There,” he says, starting forward.

Only this time he does not go blind. Mjolnir is there, a vibrant beautiful healthy hum in the short distance.

On instinct, his arm lifts and then the hammer is soaring to his fist, coming to rest with a slap of skin and loud snap of broken fingers—but it is quiet, and oh, how he only realizes how loud it was before now.

Loki and Sif had let out shouts when they witnessed the feat, Loki moreso when Thor’s fingers become mangled in the process. But Thor is laughing, tears spilling from tired eyes.

It hurts, but it is different now.

Fate itself was a crafty thing.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there guys.
> 
> I think all my personality on the internet got sucked out of me and now solely lives in my fics, idk when that happened??

The healers bind his fingers, knowing a quick recovery would serve true with his Aesir blood. They rebind his shoulder, nodding seriously but happy enough with the progress.

“You’re just like your brother,” they tell him. “Always breaking something.”

Thor knows they mean Balder, but it is Loki he thinks of. He feels a small shame at that, and supposes it will always be there, inside him. Gnawing at the baseless guilt he has for abandoning a brother he never knew he had, all those many cold years.

Loki is surprisingly absent from his bedside. He had left almost immediately after the healers had their studious hands on Thor. Sif had followed him out, but then returned just as quickly, her features solemn.

She offered Thor a genuine smile when he wordlessly jerked his head towards where Loki had left.

Sif sat beside him when they were alone, and he grasped her hand in both of his. Startled, it took a squeeze before she relaxed in his hold.

“You are a strange thing,” she tells him, wondrous.

“I often tell Loki the same.”

She snorts at that and squeezes his hand in return. Her fingers are small, and he wonders how many lives such hands have taken.

“Have you seen war?” he asks her, curious.

She hums. “Not anything to the scale of what you have lived, though I suppose you won’t remember you were so small?” He nods. “I’ve seen brothers kill each other over a poor maid, sparking an Elvish war. I’ve seen dwarves slay entire clans for mountainous caches. I’ve seen boars lay waste to a forest and trample out all else, desiring a world for themselves. War changes, but it’s always the same. It’s merely the scale that is altered. It is the lives we consider more valuable than others that elevate one conflict over another.”

“You’ve experienced so much,” he says, and means, you’ve hurt.

“It is our way,” she tells him. There is honesty, pride in her voice, and in her eyes he can see no regret. She is a warrior through and through. He admires her more than he can say.

“One day perhaps I will know your blade beside mine,” he tells her, meaning it.

Sif smiles at that, completely different than he’s seen before. She leans into him, and then stands promptly.

“I should away to the kitchens, you must be starving with all the excitement of the day.”

Thor shakes his head, sees Sif’s eyes flick to the hammer sat so casually to his left.

“What did Loki say?”

She looks down quickly. “He’s seeking word from Frigga. She has been gone too long, she needs to know what has happened.”

Thor feels laughter trap in his throat. “Something tells me she already knows.”

Sif eyes him, cautious.

“Strange creature, indeed,” she mutters with a bow of her head. She leaves.

Thor lies back, brings his unbroken fingers to the hilt. Her weight is a pleasant hum in his hand, the leather a soft rasp against his skin. How could he have gone so long without knowing _this_?

Just outside, beyond the great golden arches of the looming windows, a raven cries. Loud and shrill, and present.

\--

Loki aways to Jotunheim. As soon as he feels familiar snow and ice crunch beneath his boots, he is exhausted. There is a known dread here, and never has he felt it more than now. Now, on the tail of golden palaces and arching pillars, dripping, fat fruit, and Thor, _Thor_. Returned to him, his again.

His heart beats an unsteady rhythm on his way back to his frozen kingdom, the nearly windless drift of salt burning his lungs.

His flesh is a familiar hue once more, and he is slow to remember the terrible entreaty that left his skull bereft of royal weight. His own shadow betrays him now.

“I was never here nor there, besides,” he murmurs to the silence.

Fitting one who can summon both cock and cunny to the wet of pleasure lose the very shadow that had marked them for an age. An age of salt, of staring up after leaders not fit to lead, of clenching still-beating hearts of fathers and smashing them between aching fingers.

Whenever he thinks of Laufey, he can still feel it. That stir of the gut, that shuttering blind rage, that bile-thickening hatred that drives one to torment and take vengeance. The uprising of the soul, he remembers, letting the feeling flow through him.

To a violent age, he thinks, and begins walking.

\--

Nothing has changed. The halls are still tall and wide and empty and cold. But he does not remember being cold. Loki isn’t sure when that changed.

Byleister and Frigga are nowhere to be found. He spends hours searching. The palace is empty, and what was once a throne sits still shattered right where he’d left it. A monument to Laufey’s legacy.

Loki walks slowly to the lowest point of it all, half in shadow. He can see Jotunheim’s dim, milky star through an opening in the ice. He presses his hands into the floor beneath him, numbing the very bone.

He’s there for some time before he hears the horns.

\--

A warband. Byleister is the first he sees, for how could he ever forget his blood? Frigga is there as well, carried in what can only be a carriage crafted for her, for it is small and ornate even for Jotunheim. The giveaway is the red shade of the silks covering the entry. He’d seen red in Jotnar blood, and in the slick press of fish flesh as fishmongers drained the thick bodies of what swam in the salty depths.

These days, both were rather rare.

Loki sees the bright flicker of torches in the crowd and it draws his gaze farther out. The band is long, longer than his own people could maintain. They’ve been travelling, and have gathered others.

There are salt tribes of many banners marching together, and it is not an unfriendly march he thinks. There is laughter drifting up to him from where he stands before the entry. Children’s laughter. And then he sees them. Families, many of the children already taller than he is now, standing. There are scarred warriors, mothers, children, and before it all is Frigga, peeking her golden tresses out through a veil of red. She grins when she sees him, knowing, in her way.

Loki suspects if he knew every working of seidr, every small learning Frigga surely has tucked away inside her head, he’d be overwhelmed by it all.

They once spoke of Heimdall’s prowess, those he’d known as a boy, but how should it be so stark he’d not known of Frigga-Queen’s?

Loki trudges through knee deep snow to reach them, and Byleister is obviously fighting the urge to pick up his brother at the sight of him. Such an easily pleased thing, Loki thinks, smiling up at him. He _had_ missed one aspect of Jotunheim, he realizes.

Frigga alights upon the snow, dressed in armor and a cape of her own, a brightly-sheathed edge at one hip neatly piercing the snow. Her long golden curls are tight braids upon each shoulder. She looks fearsome, and Loki need not wonder how she’d caught the eye of the father of the gods.

She embraces him and that is perhaps most startling of all.

When she releases him, her eyes are piercing.

“It is as I’d hoped. I have seen my husband,” she says, loud for enough to hear. There is anxious murmuring and Loki suspects dissent to spread but it stops as soon as it has begun. “And I have seen Thor,” she says more quietly, addressing only Loki.

She touches his face when he tries to look away.

“We must return to Asgard. There is much we three need discuss.”

Loki is confused, and Frigga strokes a thumb across his cheek. He feels warmth spread across his bones like a well needed slumber.

“Together.”

And Loki nods, trusting her entirely in that moment.

He is ready to be rid of this land.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end.

It is raining upon their return. Thor is there, waiting in the hall of a dead King, the throne empty and stark in the dim light. The hammer is grasped in a familiar hand almost loosely and Frigga is the first to go to him.

Her arms wrap around him, as if he’d never been away from her for so, so many years. As if it was not an unkempt thing to touch a near-stranger so. 

But Thor surprises Loki. Strong arms light around her shoulders and he is slow to embrace her. But embrace her is what he does, closing his eyes at the last moment.

Loki inhales, feeling his gut roil, the anxious clawing of nerves refusing to be forgotten.

“Thor,” he calls, formal.

Thor meets his gaze, steady and serious. He smiles, but it takes a moment.

Thor does not seem entirely himself and it has Loki’s fingers twitching. This Thor is different.

“We need to speak. Privately.”

Frigga touches her son’s face, briefly. Then Loki starts forward, brushing Thor’s bare forearm as he follows Frigga-Queen. When their eyes meet, Thor’s is all steel and terrible things.

But Loki sees the look soften just barely. Thor is quick enough to grab after Loki’s hand and squeeze it once.

Still my Thor, he thinks, despite so much seidr filling the air about that curious creation dangling from his bound fingers.

A creation quite like that of Loki, for Thor to still hold onto it in spite of it having broken him in some awful way.

Loki touches two fingers to his brow, remembering.

\--

The room is the same they once all sat in, before revelations and sorrow and the bone-deep loss that Loki remembered far too well.

He takes the first seat, tired and familiar now with the Queen and her wars. She was a fearsome being but informal in the strangest of ways. She had given him leeway in many things thus far but always in regard to Thor in some way. Her golden first born.

His fingers twitch against the strength of the table. Imagines splintering shards severing the fragile skin at each nail. Imagines the red of his blood filling pale flesh pink before spilling out. A foreign site in a still too-foreign land.

But why then, did he feel so at peace here?

Loki watches Thor take a seat easily beside him, their knees touching barely. Him, it was because of him.

The hammer is sat between their outstretched arms on the table top. Frigga’s armor remains and she sits accordingly. Upright, present, easily bent for a fight, and he’s not entirely sure what she intends with this meeting, but he still feels that niggling of trust in his belly.

Trusting and nervous. Loki has felt both, but never simultaneously.

He remembers touching his head to a golden floor, tears and his own blood staining metal while before him was Thor, watching wordlessly. Remembers the ghost of words flying uncaring and passion-filled from his dry lips. Remembers Thor’s palm on the top of his head, fingers spearing gently through his hair.

Perhaps then.

“Mjolnir,” Frigga murmurs.

She’s staring at the hammer. Her eyes are filled with all the many wonders such a thing can hold, and she knows them all better than either of them could.

“I never knew,” Thor says.

Frigga nods. “Respect its power and it will respect you. One should never spit upon a star. Bleed on one, hold it close while sleeping, yes, but never with insult.”

Thor’s knee jumps softly beside his own and Loki wonders at it. The seidr is cloying, the very etch of it like runes themselves crawling about his skin. As if they had taken flight, chose his bones to latch to. But no, they merely dance about him. It is Thor they cling to. Thor, his Thor.

The carvings hold mysteries, though Loki can read them plain as anything. But it’s a weight upon his chest and he has no idea how Thor is managing so easily. As if it has no effect upon him at all.

_Aesir_ , his mind supplies.

How did Laufey ever manage to kill Odin, he thinks to himself.

Frigga meets his eyes then and he has the startling thought that she’s heard his wonderings.

But it is quick, a glance, and when she looks away her lips form an honest smile.

“Jotunheim is truly a gorgeous land,” she tells them both.

Loki snorts at that, feels Thor knock into his knee gently. Loki knocks him back.

“Why did you go?” Thor asks her.

“I needed to know. Needed to see what you have lived.”

Impossible, Loki thinks.

Frigga laughs then and Loki sinks slightly in his seat, decides to simply stop thinking.

“Let me be clear. I needed to see those you’ve lived with. We were an ignorant race, same as any. There was much we did not know or understand before the war. After Odin was gone, I made a vow to myself to learn all I could.”

“You could have come at any time,” Loki reminds her.

“Yes, but risk upsetting the careful peace that was in place? I wouldn’t have dared.”

Loki sighs, knowing these are things they’ve gone over before, in other ways. Old stories with old ends. He is tired of going in circles.

“Then why now?” Thor asks, still the calm one.

“Byleister and I share similar views of what a land and a kingdom should be. Jotunheim, for all her victories, is still a poor land. Food is scarce, its children small or gone, its wastes growing higher with each turn about your star.”

Loki grits his teeth, nodding.

“Destroying Laufey was the greatest thing you could have done for Jotunheim, but enough it is simply not. Not to save it as you meant to,” she says, voice sincere.

“And what do you know of what I mean to do for my land?” he asks, sitting up straighter in his seat.

“Do not most rulers want prosperity and wealth for their lands? Civilizations cannot thrive on brutality and starvation. Laufey was the exception, and I do not see him when I look at you, Farbauti-son.”

He blinks at the mention of his mother. It’s been so long since he’s heard her name spoken by any other than himself.

Then Thor’s hand is there, a steady warmth upon his knee. He’s still looking at Frigga.

“I returned to my kingdom, to the sight of you beside Byleister and tribes who haven’t walked beside one another for an eon. What are you after?”

“A joining.”

Loki hears the echo of Angrboda’s voice, hates the wretched memory of it.

“You mean the one my father intended?” he asks, blunt. Thor’s palm is heavy on his knee.

Frigga frowns, so rare from what he’s witnessed.

“No. A joining of realms. Of our people,” she states, brows quirked upward.

“I don’t understand,” they both say. Outside, the cascade of rain has increased and Loki knows it is directly Thor’s doing.

Frigga leans forward, loops aged fingers together, staring at them.

“Established trade routes, travel rights, farm land, food, training, allies in a fight.” Frigga shakes her golden head seemingly in wonder. “Knowledge, education from Asgardian scholars, furs and seidmongers to help keep the salts at bay and your children fed and safe from the wilds of the farther ice. We can lessen the barrier of confusion and bias between our realms and you, Loki. _You_ have the power to start it all. To enter your land into a new era.”

Insanely, the first thought Loki has is of all the fruit Byleister would want to eat.

“You’d have to gather quite a bit of food,” he says, stunned by the very idea of a joined land. A shared initiative for a better future. One made rich by a golden civilization they’d once set out to destroy.

“The Jotnar despite seidr,” Thor says. And it’s true. Loki is the very example of Jotunheim’s shame. “Wrongly so, but they do. Many stood with Loki when he took his father’s place, but many bent the knee because they had no other choice. There will still be those who refuse such an offer. Many do not want peace. They merely want bloodshed, for they’ve been without a true war in so long. I know for I was once among them, the warriors. They’d begun carving lines of tales that _would be_ rather than _what were_. Battles they’d vow they’d fight and win. Enemies they believed they would conquer. Many scars wove tales of Asgardian deaths.”

Loki looked at Thor, never having known such a thing. His words were all true, but to grow so complacent, so _bored_ , as to carve the scars of _maybes_ and _would bes_ was both foolish and hopeful. Two things a Jotun warrior hated to be.

“They will not accept this offer.”

“Aye, as many of Asgard’s people will not. But in time, they will. They will have to. For their children. Parents learn quickly to stomach things they do not tolerate if it means a chance at a better life for their offspring.” She looks at Thor. “A parent will look into their children’s eyes and see themselves, all their many terrible failings. See all the choices they could have made differently.”

She swallows hard and the room is painfully quiet, filled only with the sound of steady rain for a long while.

Finally, Frigga says, “Bias is only ever unraveled with learning. Hatred can be undone. I have known this.”

She looks at Loki then, and he sees several things there, in her stare. But then she blinks and she’s standing.

Frigga goes to stand beside Loki, and then she crouches there, her hands finding his own. She doesn’t so much as spare a look at Thor’s hand on his knee, still, ever-present.

“I beg of you a freer world, Loki-King. A world where slaves and royalty can love one another without a generation’s bloodshed. Where children from two realms, descended from war, can grow to be friends beside one another. To be blood brothers in a battle against things more important than the color of your skin, the shape of your scars. To believe in an age of riches without greed, of love without judgment, of two Kings who can do anything they set their minds to, no matter how they were raised or what trials they have faced.”

Thor’s hand is suddenly gone from his knee, changed to a pleasant warmth at the back of his neck. Loki closes his eyes, imagines Thor beside him each night and every morning.

Loki remembers clutching a heart in his hand, an act begot out of a want for change. And that Thor was there, every step of the way.

Loki bends his head to Frigga. Says, “You will have it.”

And when Thor drops his own head to press against Loki’s side, he feels his chest swell, the unfamiliar feeling of incomprehensible hope filling him to bursting.

\--

When they are alone, Loki feels his bones ache. He lies on Thor’s massive sprawling bed and feels his eyes nearly close the first deep breath he draws in.

“Travelling between worlds is still entirely too tiring,” he gripes. He hears Thor’s answering chuckle from the baths attached. Hears the water splash. He would join but feels he must yet respect the strange space between the two of them. Neither has ventured past embraces or small pecks of lips to skin, chaste and dry. Neither has been in the mood either, he supposes.

Loki turns with some minor effort, gaze alighting upon that of Mjolnir, the hammer so beguiling and heavy, Loki can practically feel it from where he lies. He reaches across to the small end table beside the bed and touches a finger to the ancient metal. He can feel within his breast the hum of endless, ageless seidr. A magic more powerful than the very cosmos. It burns him to touch.

He comes back to the present finally when Thor _hms_ quietly from across the room. He’s wrapped himself in a green cloak, his hair dripping. He’s been watching Loki admire the weapon, and he wonders briefly if Thor will be mad he dared to touch it.

“It’s a marvelous wonder, is it not?”

“Yes,” Loki tries. There are not words. “That’s really not your color.”

Thor grins, broad and silly. Loki reaches a hand out and Thor goes to him.

“Honestly, I think it was meant for you. But I could find no other.”

“Perhaps your mother knew I would be staying tonight,” Loki murmurs as Thor reclines easily beside him.

“Tonight only?"

Loki rolls his eyes and elbows Thor, not lightly, in his side. “You know what I mean, brother.”

He hears the small intake of breath beside him but decidedly keeps his gaze on the hammer.

“What will you do with it?”

“I don’t really know. But ever since she flew to me I felt right, in a way. I cannot describe it. It was as if a missing piece was finally fitted where it was needed.”

“Oh, it is a _she_ now?” Loki says, turning, sly.

Thor’s cheeks are flushed, not from the baths. He’s watching Loki, and Loki decides to take what he wants. He curls into Thor’s side. It’s warmth, and foundation, and oh, the _smell_ of Thor that he has missed so much.

“I’ve missed you,” Loki voices.

“As have I, brother,” he whispers. It is Loki’s turn to inhale, air a burning whir in his throat.

Thor bends his head low, his eyes half closed. Loki watches and waits. Thor’s lips meet his own and it’s nearly painful. He feels he’s traveled a thousand ages to be here, in this moment, and he fears he will melt away if not for Thor’s hold on him.

It’s long into the night when Loki finally drifts off, his skin still tingling and his thighs wet from too few of the many things he’s craved and missed since their time apart.

Thor lies beside him, breathing evenly, deservedly. Loki watches golden lashes flutter and fingers a stray curl of hair fallen loose about his throat. Once, long ago, he wouldn’t have dared fall asleep beside his slave in bed. He can barely remember such a time. Once, he wouldn’t have let Thor even share his bed.

Now, here Loki was, in Thor’s bed, in Thor’s _land_ , in his _realm_. And he feels only happiness thrumming through him. He’s comfortably tired from it. He watches Thor sleep and thinks of all the many things he will yet do with him, his brother, his slave, his King.

“May this be an end to terrible things,” he murmurs into the silence.

Beside him, Thor hums, and turns his face towards Loki, the sound of his voice.

A long moment passes and Loki feels himself truly slipping away to sleep.

“May I never lose you again,” he says, barely audible above Thor’s breathing.

Blue eyes meet his calmly in the dark. Loki realizes it is no longer raining, that it stopped some time ago.

Thor’s hand finds his, brings it to his chest. Loki feels the steady beat of Thor’s heart against his fingers.

“Never, Loki,” Thor tells him.

They sleep.

Loki dreams of vibrant things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this years ago and I'm not really sure where the time went. I continued this through three moves, two breakups, and the start of a new college. I'm just about to start a new job along with comic work and life is continuing to be hard in places. Writing has always been the constant since I was a young kid and now I'm 23. I've been writing fan fiction for ten years, and yo that's a long time. I want to write more Thor and Loki. I want to write more for The OA, and for Star Wars, and my next few works will be Arthur/Eames from Inception.
> 
> Your support, whether through comments or just kudos, has meant the world to me and kept me motivated for so many years. Thank you. <3


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